Acts of Contrition
by domenika marzione
Summary: WIP: In the wake of seeing a mindwiped Magneto, Piotr Rasputin faces choices he thought he'd made... and those he thought he'd never have to.
1. Prologue

Acts of Contrition: Prologue 

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Note: Helpful in understanding this story, but not absolutely crucial: Saving Cain (available at and here at ff.net) Dasyatidae (available at and here at ff.net) 

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Act of Contrition 

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin.

  
  


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----- Original Message -----   
From: "Alexander Summers" ASUMMERS01@BALLIOL.OX.AC.UK  
To: "Piotr Rasputin" PNR78@PRIVET.RU  
Sent: Tuesday, 15 October, 2002 2:20 PM  
Subject: better than ipecac  
  
  
  


It should be the aspiration - indeed, the obligation - of the mutant to discover how his or her gift may best benefit society as whole. Reciprocally, it should also be the obligation of society to create such opportunities for its post-human members.

A telekinetic may find satisfaction in being a trash collector, utilizing his power to effectively clean the streets, but would he not be better served as an emergency rescuer, lifting to safety fallen skiers who cannot be reached by helicopter or raising children who have fallen down mineshafts, or as a chemist or biologist in a laboratory splitting atoms and furthering the sciences, or as a surgeon performing delicate tasks for which we do not yet possess the instruments? Would not society be better served by such synchronization of ability and need?

The education of the post-human child must be geared towards recognizing this dual obligation to both self and society, dealing sensitively with both the child's interests and abilities as well with his or her limitations, combining both into a program that optimizes the child's talents. It should be the imperative of post-human education to cultivate excellence not only on the social level, but also the individual - not just the best telekinetic surgeon, but also the best telekinetic. 

Piotr - 

Funny how he's talking about surgeons and nuclear physicists when the only telekinetic he knows is the one he's got working as a soldier in his little private army. Don't tell me that the optimal social and personal function for all of you guys is 'paramilitary soldier'. Ah, well. Hypocrisy starts at home and all that jazz. 

The rest of the article (yeah, I really did read the whole thing - even if it took me a few tries to get as far as what I quoted because I was laughing too hard) was Xavier advocating the education of mutants in publicly-funded (of course) academies - the state should pay for it because they had a vested interest in the results. I think he wants to recreate the setup they have here: the elite (post-human - does he not realize how *insulting* that sounds?) are in one system and the lumpen proletariat (human) in another and never the twain shall meet. Or maybe he wants to undo _Brown vs. Board of Education_ and call it separate but equal. I'll see if I can't find an online version of the article or else I'll just photocopy the one I have and give it to you when you guys cross the pond next month. Or does he make you read all his stuff before it goes out?

In other matters... Dude. Getting boxed 7-2 by Colorado's one thing, but back-to-back 5-1 hammerings by the *Atlanta Thrashers*? You need a new hockey team. (Remind me to take you to one of the games over here; almost as much fun as a football match, but with less beer.)

A

  
  


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	2. A Walk in the Park

Acts of Contrition One 

* * *

("You have my word that there's nothing to be concerned about, Mister Rasputin.")

Over and over he could hear the Professor's calm words, the cultured tone carrying over the laughter of the children and fall wind, conveying both supreme confidence and mild amusement. 

Of course, Xavier had thought Piotr was worried about _Magneto_. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


"Where is he?" Scott growled. He'd known all along this would happen. No plan ever went down the way it did on paper - 'the first casualty of war is the plan' - and Xavier's paper plans tended to be more cockeyed than most, a fact he'd only held as a private suspicion until his time in the Savage Lands - Magneto had been a homicidal psycho, but he understood strategy. However, even the Professor's craziest scheme usually lasted intact until they arrived on-scene. "He was supposed to be outside for his hour of rec time starting ten minutes ago."

"There are no heat signatures showing up," the Beast reported as he flipped switches and juggled monitors with a grace Scott could appreciate even out of his peripheral vision. "Infrared's got nothing."

The mission had been sold to the team as straightforward, at least as far as these things went. A rescue mission, like so many others they had performed, except this time at a prison. At least it was lower on the danger meter than a Times Square crawling with Sentinels. A fifteen-year-old pyrokinetic had been sentenced to die by lethal injection for killing the three men who had taunted him into manifesting his power for the first time. It had been an accident, a complete accident, but the kid was going to have his heart stopped by a chemical cocktail because people were scared. 

"I'll do one more fly-by," he said into the headset speaker. "After that, either we're going to have to park and figure out how we're going to get inside or we're going to have to turn around and try it again another day."

Scott had been torn about the mission - still was, to an extent. On one hand, the kid - Rusty - didn't deserve to die simply because he was a mutant. Scott was absolutely sure of that, just as he was sure that his opinions would be no different even if he hadn't been in a similar situation when his optic blasts had developed. Storm, too, empathized with the boy on that fundamental level - the unhappy kinship coming from having a power that manifested in deadly circumstances. And the others on the team had their own reasons for indignation - the Sentinels were gone, but that only meant that new and more creative - and creatively despicable - means of genetic cleansing were being developed.

"Aborting the mission is not an option," Xavier's voice sounded clearly in his ear. The Professor was monitoring them from Westchester, through radio rather than through Cerebro - even months after Weapon X, the Professor had to limit his usage lest he overdo it and develop another crippling migraine. "The Appellate Court will be delivering their verdict on Wednesday, at which point he will be transferred to a new facility."

Instead of sending the kid to Xavier or to someone else who could help him, the state prosecutor had tried him as an adult so as to ensure the death penalty. There had been very little protest. The ACLU had declined to champion the cause - they had worded it in a statement about guilt and innocence that could only be described as Clintonian. But the bottom line was that only the radical fringe groups were putting up a fuss and that was worse than nobody protesting at all. 

But while Scott had no doubts that letting the kid die was unconscionable, what about the ethics of breaking laws to ensure that didn't happen? What sort of precedent was set when mutants broke into a state penitentiary and busted out a prisoner who had not only been convicted, but had had that conviction appealed and verified? If Rusty was innocent, what happened the next time when the mutant in question wasn't? Or if they couldn't tell? Or worse, if they had been deceived - Magneto was proof positive that yes, mutants could be just as evil and deceitful as regular people. 

The Professor had countered any hesitation to comply with the mission with his usual line about post-human problems requiring post-human solutions, but Scott hadn't been appeased even as he had stopped appearing outwardly reluctant. Xavier was setting the X-Men - and, really, himself - above the laws of the land, making himself final arbiter over the duly appointed. There was something wrong about that, but Scott hadn't been able to come up with an objection that sounded like it was worth costing Rusty his life.

"You already know what they're going to vote?" Bobby asked. He was in one of the 'jerk-off seats' (a Loganism that had stuck; one of the seats not near any of the stations and with no accompanying duties - "I got nothing to do but jerk off," had been the expression). Scott was thankful that Logan himself wasn't around; the Wolverine had gone off to do some favor for Nick Fury as a sort of payment for the rescue in Finland, return date unknown.

"It's why I'm using the radio instead of Cerebro," Xavier replied. "I spent all day with Cerebro listening in. It will be a unanimous decision to reject the appeal. Justice Sawmer is crafting the document as we speak."

"Shit," Ororo muttered from the jerk-off seat right behind Scott. Without turning around, he knew she'd be sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest. The plane's tight quarters wreaked havoc with her claustrophobia. Another little reminder of Weapon X - Ro had had a handle on her fears before two months spent trapped in a box twenty hours a day.

"The defense team made an error in bringing up 'cruel and unusual punishment' at all," Henry muttered from the navigation console. "Death by lethal injection can't possibly be construed as such, not after _Morgan v. Idaho_. They should have focused solely on the ridiculousness of calling what Rusty did 'premeditated murder' instead of 'involuntary manslaughter'."

"Yeah, well," Jean agreed as she flipped off the infrared scanners as Scott banked the plane gently into a steep u-turn. She was co-piloting, which didn't mean much with him at the controls.

Scott was quite proud of how small his turning radius was with the plane; it had taken hours of simulation practice, especially after he had refused both Jean and the Professor's offer of a direct telepathic download of the knowledge. This was something he had wanted to master on his own, to feel within his bones and not have it sit on his skin, the way telepathically acquired knowledge always seemed to do. Neither of the house telepaths had understood his reluctance; maybe they didn't feel the _difference_ the way a headblind person did. Either way, his father had flown fighter planes for the Air Force and while Scott was sure he had inherited his love of flying from him, he also wanted to be sure that he had inherited the ability.

"Turn on all detection devices," he told his crew. "Second pass coming up in five, four, three, two, one... Nothing. I've got nothing. Beast?"

"Not a thing, Cyke."

"Cyclops, we've got a 9-1-1 call from a residence near the prison reporting a suspicious aircraft," Piotr said calmly from his post on comm duty, monitoring all emergency service bands. It was a necessity for any mission in a populated area. "The caller didn't say it sounded like a helicopter, though, so the dispatcher didn't sound too worried."

"Three cheers for indolence," Henry retorted. "Nearest landing spot is a half-mile from the front gate, but topological maps say it's a dead run uphill and in clear sights from the guard towers. Gatling is built on a plateau."

Scott cursed quietly to himself. For all of the sleekness and technological brilliance of the Blackbird, it imposed its own set of limitations. Finding a parking spot was bad enough, but negotiating transport to and from the plane was also becoming more and more of an issue, especially as Xavier aspired to working in more urban settings. They couldn't just park on the nearest roof. 

"We're going to be taking fire on our way out," he said to both his team and the Professor. He slowed the plane down as gently as he could and prepared it for a final sweep that would leave them flying east, towards home. "I don't like the open ground and I don't like walking up to a well-armed prison and not knowing who or what is waiting for us. We can probably get through to the building itself without detection, but even assuming we get in and get out with our objective met and no exchanges of firepower, it's a long walk back out."

They had argued about this during the planning sessions. Scott had been somewhere between skeptical and incredulous when the Professor had announced the breakout and had only been mollified enough to listen by the promise that it would be a purely outdoor activity, that retrieving Rusty from his mandated recreation hour could be accomplished with half the team staying in reserve in the hovering Blackbird while the other half performed the snatch-and-grab. 

"Too bad Kurt isn't here," Bobby mused. 

"I disagree on the danger level of the mission," Xavier said, sounding mildly impatient to Scott's ears. "Jean's telepathy should facilitate both locating and extracting Rusty from..."

"From a Class 1 maximum security facility with perfect geography and a State Corrections Department that has the lowest hack-to-prisoner ratio in the entire country," Scott cut him off. "This isn't busting someone out of the county clink past a deputy who buttons his shirt wrong. Jean's going to have to control a couple of dozen minds just to get us past the welcome mat and she might have to do hundreds if we have to get him out of his cell."

The other concern, the one he hadn't voiced during the strategy sessions, was that this mission had the potential to bring up some very bad memories of Weapon X. All of the work they had done since their release had been, for them, routine. Pulling kids out of the clutches of lynch mobs, stopping mutant bad guys from robbing banks and blowing up munitions dumps, the usual sort of high profile celebrity policing that Xavier seemed to favor as being most expeditious in proving the goodwill of the team. But breaking into a prison was Weapon X sort of work. And Scott wasn't sure how well any of them were prepared to face those demons yet.

"He's in solitary," Jean pointed out. "And I can do a room at once."

She sounded defensive and Scott sent a sort of mental apology to her. This wasn't about questioning her skills as a telepath; this was about not wanting her to have to simultaneously battle the psyches of everyone in Gatling Penitentiary and the memories of one Dr. Atul Pandya. Because once they got inside, the likelihood of Jean having to choose between saving a teammate and saving an opponent grew much higher. Especially because, just like in India, they would be facing opponents who were not enemies - the hacks and wardens of Gatling Pen would be fending off _invaders_, would be just doing their jobs and not anything malicious. 

"I'm not sure what to say, Cyclops," Xavier sighed. "This is a mission of paramount importance - a young boy's life is on the line. I wish you had more faith in your own tactical skills and in the skills of your teammates, but I can't force you to do something you don't want to do - or are afraid to do."

"Don't question my courage," Scott yelled into his mouthpiece, taking small satisfaction by the way everyone around him jumped slightly. Xavier couldn't fuck with his head from the inside, so he was going to do it from the outside, using the one thing they both knew would get Scott's goat - his insecurity about his command. Between the Wolverine engineering the rescue from Finland and his own _manipulated_ flight from the team to Magneto, Scott was never sure of where he stood before his teammates. And Xavier was using that doubt shamelessly. "And we both know you damned well can make me do whatever the hell you want."

"Cyclops!" Xavier intoned, then softened his voice. "Scott..." 

"This isn't about my courage or my faith in anyone," Scott went on unbowed, focusing all of his anger on the mind that couldn't hear him at this distance and not on the joystick in his hands. Next to him, he could see - and feel - Jean wince slightly, but he didn't apologize this time. "I _know_ we can get in and get Rusty out. But I _don't_ know if we can do it without a fight. We did only rudimentary prep work on the inside workings of the prison and that won't be enough to avoid casualties. How many people are you willing to sacrifice to get Rusty out? How many human guards equal a mutant life?"

"The X-Men don't kill, Cyclops." 

The voice was more remote now, more aloof. The paternal tact had been tried and shelved, Scott observed dryly. Time now to be only the boss and not the mentor. Xavier had first called into question his ability to lead and then reinforced it with a public reminder that field command was as far as his authority went and even that was by allowance. But Scott had learned a lot about manipulation in Finland and wasn't going to let Xavier win so easily. The lessons taught by Weapon X had come at a grievous cost and at least one of them should get their money's worth out of the tutoring. 

"Well, they're going to be shooting at us with lots of bullets, Professor. Are you willing to sacrifice one of us for Rusty?"

There was a silence then, one that was as cold as it was uncomfortable. 

"Fifteen," Henry said quietly. "We'll have a minimum of fifteen guards to face before we can enter in the belly of the prison. Assuming we don't go in the front gate, we'll have to deal with the three in each of the two guard towers on the corners, plus two pairs of roving guards in the yards between the gates and the main building. Unless we want to open up a wall, there are two guards posted at the door and we'll have to clear at least three more to get into where they house the prisoners. There is a special guard detail for solitary and there's no info on what that's like."

Scott banked the plane for one more pass, taking a wider turn so as to fly over different ground and not attract any more suspicion. 

"What's the escort going to be like for the Appellate Court hearing on Wednesday?" he asked. It was as close to a compromise as he could muster. Not an apology, which was probably what Xavier was waiting for. He could offer the compromise because part of him felt lousy for being so quick to abort the mission, but the rest of him was screaming for him to trust his instincts. Even if no psychological issues popped up at the wrong moment, their Weapon X training - which had done more for their ability to efficiently work together than anything Xavier had concocted - was only applicable to a point. Wraith had expected them to kill while Xavier expected them to take a bullet before resorting to killing in self-defense and that governed strategy more than Xavier was apparently willing to admit. "Can we grab him off the street or out of the prison bus or something a little less fortified than the prison?"

"Standard issue for a Gatling State Penitentiary perimeter guard is one Smith & Wesson A-35, a semi-automatic capable of spitting out fifty shots a minute, plus a Glock nine millimeter with a standard clip," Henry read off, whistling appreciatively. "Within the perimeter yards, they are authorized to shoot on sight. And they do."  
  
"Broad daylight's harder," Jean said. "It's not like when we grabbed Alex. There will be people assigned to watch him; they're prepared for stuff like this. Especially with the Brotherhood threatening to blow up the courthouse if the verdict isn't overturned."

"Damn the twins," Scott muttered, feeling blindsided by a second wave of attack and foolish for not remembering that it was there all along. Pietro - and Scott knew it was Pietro behind the rash of bombings, not Wanda - was only interested in punishing the humans and not rescuing the mutant. "Fuck. It's now or never, isn't it."

It wasn't a question. The whole point of attempting the rescue at Gatling was that Furnald, the facility Rusty would be moved to once he was irrevocably on Death Row, was a state-of-the-art complex that was practically - and theoretically - impenetrable. It was an experimental facility supported by five states' resources where nothing took place outdoors - the prisoners exercised inside - and no schematic for the interior existed anywhere outside the facility. 

"I'm sorry, Cyclops," the Professor said, sounding like he meant it. "It wasn't my intention to put you in a position where there was no choice."

Scott bit his lip and grunted something like an acknowledgement. 

"All right, boys and girls, we're going in."

  
  


* * *

  
  


"... four guards remain in critical condition. It was announced today that renowned geneticist Nathaniel Essex will be consulted during the investigation. Essex's research was cited by the prosecution in the murder trial as evidence that a mutant does not posses implicit control of their power, a theory that was seemingly proven last night as witnesses say that the fire burned out of control almost from the outset, before Rusty himself was shot and killed. Governor Anne Ridgely Moss spoke to reporters earlier:"

"It has been a long day for everyone involved with Gatling Penitentiary. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the corrections officers wounded in the incident and we would like to assure the citizens of Jackson County that there have been no compromises in the security of the facility. All of the prisoners have been accounted for and, while there is a heightened state of alert right now, it's really only a procedural matter and things should be back to normal within forty-eight hours."

"Governor! Governor! Is it true that charges will be filed against the guards? There were reports that three of the guards are members of Friends of Humanity and that this was a premeditated attack on Rusty..."

"The FBI is investigating the incident and that's all I'll say on the matter. I will add, however, that I feel it is of utmost importance to..."

_CLICK_

"... Knock your old ass out like a bag of sleeping pills/Gotta rip things up like my name was Jack the Ripper/There's a party at your house 'cuz your momma is a stripper..."

"I was watching that, you cow!"

"It's a bunch of rednecks barbequing a mutant, Emma! Who _cares_?"

"I was _watching_ that."

"Fine!... bitch."

_CLICK_

"...Sources tell NBC News that there are conflicting reports of the events of Monday night and that the final inferno may have in fact been a cover for a botched rescue effort. The FBI, however, has refused comment on whether there is any evidence to support claims of external involvement. The Brotherhood of Mutants, which had previously threatened to take action if the conviction was not overturned, has not claimed any involvement or responsibility. 

"The death of the mutant known only as Rusty ends the latest chapter in the continuing saga of assimilating mutants into the population and whether our laws can, in fact, be applied to them... When we return, your tax dollars at work or going to seed? How the Department of Housing and Urban Development is spending millions on gardening supplies."

"Are you done? Can I turn MTV back on? Or do you want to see how Daddy's money is getting wasted buying tulips for housing projects?"

"It's all yours. I'm going to get ready."

"I'm wearing my blue Pana Hon with the halter top, so either match me or go opposite. I do **not** want to end up in a stupid picture with you on Page Six with some wiseass caption about how we were too drunk to coordinate."

"Will do. If Christian calls, make sure he's told that I'll meet him there."

"He's not going to call, you know. He's still in starlet mode."

"Oh, didn't you hear? The latest one turned out to have a porn credit to her name. He's come groveling back to polite society for a while. At least until he convinces his father that he's capable of finding a girl who doesn't have a DVD of her taking it in three orifices at once."

"I don't know what you see in him."

"He's a good lay, he photogenic enough to make me look good in the gossip rags, and he's dumb enough not to ask questions and smart enough to understand why. He's a pet, Adrienne, not a suitor."

  
  


* * *

  
  


He wasn't sure why he had come here. In one sense, the reasoning was obvious. This was where he had seen Magneto playing Frisbee with the children last week. This was where Xavier had proudly displayed his domesticated pet tyrant, like an artist with his latest creation. Which, in a sense, was the truth. 

But why he had come back to Central Park, Piotr wasn't sure. Being here wasn't going to crystallize anything. It wasn't going to clear up the muddy thoughts in his head, shine a light on what had always been murky but was now completely opaque. None of his doubts, none of his fears, _nothing_ was going to be made any better or any lesser or any _easier_ being here. 

But they wouldn't get any worse the way they would _there_, at the mansion. 

After two weeks of feeling dirty in a way he had never felt while in Boris's service, interrupted only by the messy stench that was Gatling - five days later and Piotr still wasn't sure he was imagining that his clothes and skin smelled of smoke and burning flesh - he had finally had enough. He had stayed out last night, fled the mansion yesterday afternoon on the first Manhattan-bound train he could catch after his training session, leaving Bobby to play video games and watch baseball on his own.

Xavier, perhaps concerned about his reaction to seeing Magneto and more probably concerned about the fallout from Gatling that hadn't been settled by the three team meetings, had stopped by Piotr's room as he had been getting ready. The conversation had been brief - Piotr was too old for either a curfew or a chat about safe sex. Xavier had simply reminded him that if he was going to be exceptionally late, then he should find a room at a hotel in Manhattan. 

Piotr hadn't needed a room. On his second stop of the night, a small club on 8th that was not yet part of the Everything Queer supermarket culture of that part of Chelsea, he had met a beautiful little Polish boy who had an apartment nearby and whose roommate was out of town. Krzysztof wasn't his usual type - too slender, too fem - but that had, after all, been one of the reasons Piotr had gone to Chelsea and not the West Village, why instead of looking for someone strong enough to take him he had gone looking for someone who could withstand being taken. And Krzysztof had been that, yet too wrapped up in his own pleasure to be anything more. Nor should he have been.

While it had been a good night, the release had been only temporary, only physical. Piotr had woken up this morning bothered not only by the uncomfortableness of waking up in a stranger's bed, but also by the knowledge that he had done nothing to solve his problems. The sex had been a distraction, an avoidance. The miasma he had run from was not dissipated; it was just another day older and thicker. 

And so he had gently turned down Krzysztof's offer of a breakfast in bed and instead showered and left, picking up a bagel and coffee at a Greek diner on 23rd and walking north. The unpleasant feeling in his stomach had only grown as he approached Times Square, so instead of turning right on 42nd and heading over to Grand Central, he had continued north, through the sea of tourists and school trips, theatre types going to work and retailers hawking their goods, past the posh hotels near Carnegie Hall and towards Central Park. 

Columbus Circle was perpetually under construction now that the Coliseum was gone and the traffic pattern was getting re-arranged and Piotr had waited to cross the street under the scaffolding that shielded the makeshift sidewalk. It had smelled cool and damp and dank behind him, as if the shade itself was musty from being locked away, but Piotr hadn't minded it, knowing what lay ahead as soon as he entered the park.

The southwest corner of Central Park always smelled of horseshit, even in the coldest of seasons. In the summer it was unbearable, but in the warmth of fall it had been merely unpleasant. This was the corner where the hansom cabs waited for gullible tourists and eager-to-impress suitors and the stink of horses and their waste carried into the park along with the noise of the tower they were building where the Coliseum had once stood. 

Piotr had walked purposefully, even if he hadn't exactly sure where he was going. The park was a closed system, all paths led either to the Drive or to an exit or to a path that would take you to one, so he hadn't worried about getting lost. He had had no destination in mind and was just walking for the sake of keeping in motion, away from what awaited him back at Salem Center.

He hadn't even realized he was back by the Sheep Meadow until he saw a Frisbee fly by. It had been a blue one, not the red one that Magneto had been playing with, but it had been enough. He had found the first unoccupied bench facing the lawn and sat down, accepting that this is where he had been going to all along.

That had been an hour ago and Piotr had not moved since then except to shoo away some aggressive pigeons interested in staking a claim on the remainder of his everything bagel. No insights had been achieved, no realizations made, and the idleness felt wasteful.

Why had Xavier brought him to see Magneto? Had it been a show of trust or merely a display of power? What could Piotr do with the information and what did Xavier think he would do with it? Xavier is not a lawyer, but he operated in the same fashion and never asked a question he didn't already know the answer to. As they all had witnessed in the plane over Gatling. Piotr knew that Xavier had known that he could do nothing. Magneto is a tiger by the tail and you could not let him go - there was nothing in Magneto's attitudes or desires that had been 'fixed', there had been no morality readjustment that would produce a Magneto not bent on dominating the human race. Erik Lehnsherr was harmless now only because he didn't know he was Magneto. Magneto couldn't be harmless.

The real question hadn't changed, however. Knowledge of Magneto's survival hadn't changed the fact that Piotr had been unsettled in some vague way since the misadventures with Weapon X. Xavier was at the root of it, but Piotr had been unable to narrow down the precise nature of why. Or, perhaps more accurately, why _then_ and not at any earlier point. It was not as if he hadn't been carrying around doubts since the first time he had poured himself into the black latex outfit and answered to Colossus. 

He had been over those qualms so often that he knew them as well as he had known the dirt roads near his grandmother's home in Siberia, well-worn paths that never changed. As long as the X-Men had been about saving lives, he could live with being a resented hero; his life up until now had had nothing to speak against serving a penance of benevolence with no chance at glory. He had killed, he had stolen, he had cheated and lied and extorted and threatened. He had made children cry and adults beg for mercy. He had committed transgressions that could never be forgiven even if he believed in a higher power with that authority. He didn't deserve recognition for good deeds. This had never been about what he deserved; it had been about looking at himself in the mirror and not feeling shame.

But the X-Men's focus wasn't totally about saving lives anymore. Now, when they weren't sublimating the established social order, they were seeking fame and status as celebrities and serving as missionaries in Xavier's new religion of separate-but-equal species. And Piotr wasn't sure which was worse. 

Celebrity was seductive and public adoration a drug that had burned through his veins like fire and burned away the self-loathing that had come with his bloodstained hands. An addicting substance, and in Piotr's own mind, he had paid a junkie's price with Rogue's touch in Tokyo, hubris turning around and biting him in the ass like it was supposed to. Seek glory for the first good deeds after a career of so many bad ones and... boom. Weapon X had been the harshest kind of detox, but it had worked. Piotr craved the spotlight no more. He had granted no interviews since their release, posed for no photographs, and answered no fan mail. Xavier had asked him to resume his public relations work but Piotr had demurred, making vague promises he had no intention of following through on. Especially after he had seen a draft copy of one of Xavier's chapters in his forthcoming book a couple of days before Weapon X attacked.

The book. They had all known about the book; Xavier had been working on it even as the X-Men had just been beginning. They had thought it some kind of pro-mutant platform, some kind of homo superior-friendly treatise that Henry had said would make Xavier out to be like a latter day Frederick Douglass and Alex had said would probably come out closer to Thomas Muntzer or the Unabomber. They had even expected some of Xavier's weirder ideas - 'post-human rebaptism' - to be included. But they hadn't, at least Piotr hadn't, expected what they had gotten: it was part demagoguery and part New Age philosophy and part _Mein Kampf_. The table of contents had had chapters on economics and education and law enforcement and nutrition. It wasn't a demand for mutants to be treated as humans, which had been Xavier's rallying cry against Magneto and the Brotherhood. It had been a founding of a new world order and it had seemed, at least in draft form, to require a faith that Piotr knew he wouldn't be able to muster. He couldn't construct a god who would forgive him for his own crimes; it was too much to ask for him to worship an idol of someone else's making.

These had been the thoughts that had occupied him during the long hours of his incarceration in Finland when he wasn't being run through tests in the lab or trying to keep Bobby's fragile hope alive. They hadn't known what had become of Xavier, if he had been taken or if he had been left behind in the rubble. They hadn't thought he'd been killed, though. And with the certainty of his survival came questions - how would this change things? 

The answer had been that it wouldn't. They had been rescued and dropped off at a mansion that had been rebuilt in their absence and there had been no debriefing beyond Nick Fury's crew's incessant questions. There had been no therapy, either, no offers to talk to a shrink that was either Xavier or not, no crisis counselors or other trappings of contemporary society's reaction to bad things happening. Nothing had changed. After three days mostly spent re-organizing things toppled over in the raid and replacing lost clothing and lost breakfast cereals and reassuring (or lying to) concerned relatives, Xavier had had them back in the VR room to train. It hadn't mattered that Bobby was still having nightmares or that Henry was angry and drowning in self-hatred and self-pity and that he was _blue_. Post-human reactions to trauma must be different, apparently, because there was nothing humane about what had happened or how they had dealt with the aftereffects. 

They had gone back to what passed for normal and Xavier had gone back to his book, Jean bringing his laptop into the medical lab. And the longer the 'normal' went on, the more suspicious Piotr had gotten. Because he _had_ changed in Finland. Or, rather, he had realized that he had not changed at all. He had been willing to kill his captors and just because he had been stopped from doing so didn't mean much in the end. As the days turned into weeks and all of the surface damage was erased - with the exception of Henry - Piotr had realized how desperately he wanted someone to call him on it, to make an issue out of his 'backsliding'. But nobody did. And the discomfit had continued, festering and untouched and seemingly unnoticed, until two weeks ago. That was when Xavier had shown him the post-human response to dissenters with a tendency towards violence. 

A warning or just a coincidence? Piotr hadn't asked then because Xavier never divulged anything by accident and if it had been just a coincidence, then he didn't want to draw Xavier's concern. If Xavier simply thought that Piotr was just suffering from remorse for wanting to kill Wraith, then it was best to let him continue to think thusly until it becomes necessary to do otherwise.

"You are without your friend today," a voice said from Piotr's right and he turned his face, followed immediately by his stomach. Magneto - Erik Lehnsherr - was standing almost over him, squinting in the sunlight and holding a cup from Starbucks, and it was all Piotr could do not to squirm. "Do you mind if I join you?"

Piotr, dumb with surprise, couldn't even form words. Instead, he just gestured towards the bench. It was an odd kind of thrill, he realized, to sit so close to an enemy such as Magneto. Like sitting next to a sleeping lion you knew wouldn't awaken. 

"I wonder if perhaps your friend looked familiar to me because _you_ looked familiar to me," Magneto (_Erik_, Piotr mentally corrected himself) said conversationally, sipping at his coffee and crossing his outstretched legs at the ankles. He was dressed as he had been before, clean and casual. Attractive, but Piotr didn't let himself wander down that path - ungentlemanly thoughts about one man who could kill him with a gesture was bad enough. "You are taller and broader than the average person, dare I point out the obvious, and while I am terrible with names and faces, I seem to be able to remember size. I remember nobody's face. Sometimes, when I see someone I think is familiar, I am sure I am only guessing. But your friend..."

Piotr wasn't sure which part disturbed him more - the casual talk with a man who had killed so man or the fact that he kept referring to Xavier, the man who had reduced him to this existence, as Piotr's friend. "The Professor has been on television a few times," he finally replied. "Maybe you saw him there."

A man walked by talking loudly on his cell phone and they both frowned in distaste. 

"Maybe," Erik agreed, taking another sip. 

They sat in silence, then, watching the joggers and walkers and tourists who crossed in front of them. It was an effort, Piotr realized, to will the tension from his supposedly relaxed posture and keep his stomach from rebelling. A great effort to remember that this was Erik, not Magneto, and that Xavier was really too good at playing with people's minds for Piotr to have much of a concern that the mental blocks would suddenly slip and the Master of Magnetism would return between sips of coffee. Because Xavier _was_ that good - Bobby's tears over his failed romance had proven it. Xavier was that good and Magneto had known so - he had worn the helmet precisely because there was no other way to keep Xavier from having open access. 

If it had been any other villain, Piotr wondered, would he still be so nervous? If it had been Colonel Wraith or Boris or even one of the other members of the Brotherhood sitting there brainwashed next to him, would he be so on guard? Was it the mind he feared or the powers? Magneto was one of the few opponents against whom turning into his steel form would actually present a greater disadvantage. Or could it the fact that Magneto had once been Xavier's _ally_, that the man sitting next to him sipping coffee and blissfully ignorant of the mindwipe that had erased his most treasured memories and his identity was the object lesson that Xavier didn't take being crossed well. Erik Lehnsherr had been a _friend_. 

"Forgive me if I am stepping over some imaginary boundary here," Erik began, looking over at Piotr. "But I am not a native New Yorker and you are certainly not a native New Yorker and so speaking to you at all does not violate that personal space that the people here seem to feel stretches to all five senses... Is there something the matter? You look terribly... concerned."

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Piotr sighed instead. He had thought about this since the last time he had been here. If he should have deposited Xavier in the waiting limousine and run back into the park and told Erik that that was not his life, that he was actually a mutant terrorist and that his _children_ were in fact still wandering around in the museum not five minutes away. Or at least done _something_, because even if this were the only way to keep Magneto from causing problems, the means bothered him on such a profound level that they couldn't possibly be justified by their noble ends. He himself had lived too long under someone else's yoke, had grown up in a country reeling in confusion after having just broken free, had just escaped from a place where he had been half zoo animal and half disposable weapon and returned to the 'home' where their nominal host felt no hesitation to play with their minds to get them to do his bidding...

"It is a... philosophical question," Piotr found himself saying. He felt like he was balancing on a high wire; negotiate this conversation or fall down to the ground. And yet there was the edge of something in his mind - _not_ telepathy - that was edging him forward despite the risks, something that assured him that if he got across this high wire, then there would be some reward, some answer. "Free will versus the good of the state."

Erik half-chuffed a laugh of understanding, the kind that said that he understood the impossibility of the question yet at the same time thought it completely abstract. For what would a teacher of disabled children and a young man of no obvious importance have to do with settling matters of state? "It depends on the will, I suppose. How dangerous is it to everyone else? The mayor here, he would have it that nobody smokes even in their own homes. Now, does he have the right to do that by saying that anyone who smokes in spite of the risks doesn't deserve to make their own decisions? If a smoker is on Medicare and the government will have to pay for their treatment once they get emphysema or lung cancer, does he have the right to force that person to quit smoking?"

Piotr found himself smiling ruefully at Erik's open expression. Was that what he had been like _before_ it all, back when it was Erik and Charles and their dreams for a safe haven where mutants could live freely? Before the idealism had hardened into dogmatism, before aspirations had become violent actions? Was the Erik Lehnsherr sitting next to him really what he could have become if something hadn't happened to turn him into Magneto - or was that even a logical question? 

"The behavior is bad," Piotr admitted as the pause grew and Erik's thoughtful air turned into one of expectation. "It is very bad. And it is dangerous and many people will get hurt from it. But the alternative is not to incarcerate the person or to give them a ticket. The punishment for that behavior is to destroy everything that person is, the good and the bad."

"No, it is not like smoking, then," Erik said, pursing his lips in rueful agreement. A trio of small children followed by a their parents came running by and Piotr winced at the squeals of laughter. "On the one hand, it would be easy to say that one life in exchange for many is a fair trade. On the other... The Sentinels. How many innocents were killed by those _machines_ in the name of protection? How many of the mutants who died were never going to cause any harm, were never going to misuse their gifts? What if we have killed the one who could have lived to cure cancer? What if we have killed the next Mozart?"

Piotr knew that Xavier wouldn't have left Erik to be a human without sincere pro-mutant feelings. The Professor didn't play that fairly. 

"If anything, the Sentinels proved that Machiavelli was wrong," Erik continued sourly. "There is a point at which the ends do not justify the means."

The sun broke through a cloud and suddenly illuminated Piotr's face and it was all he could do not to laugh helplessly at the aptness of it all. Instead, he reached for the sunglasses that were in his jacket pocket. "It all depends on where you decide that point is, then."

"Mmm," Erik agreed vaguely. "An obvious answer, yet an unsatisfactory one. We are poor actors in our Socratic dialogue, my friend. We have not come up with the answer, just a new question." 

Piotr kept his disagreement to himself. He _had_ come up with an answer. He had felt conflicted about being uncomfortable with the mental blocks placed in Magneto's head, the ones that made him Erik (and not even the 'old' Erik). Means versus ends, a debate that he hadn't been able to resolve because he hadn't been able to come up with an example of suitable magnitude. He never would have considered it in the context of the Sentinels - he _couldn't_ think of it in the context of the Sentinels because he simply couldn't wrap his mind around the notion of them being a _good thing_. But Erik could because Erik thought he was human and the Sentinels were ostensibly for his protection. 

"Erik, Erik!" A boy came running up to them, arms waving as if the shouted name wouldn't have drawn attention. He was obviously one of Erik's charges and he was followed by a quartet more, accompanied by two chaperones. 

Erik greeted the children warmly and instructed them to set up for their soccer game on the grass across from the bench. He pushed off the back of the bench, leaning forward and putting the lid on what remained of his coffee. "A little philosophy is a good thing in the morning. I thank you. I'd thank you by name if I knew it."

Piotr smiled wryly and extended his hand. "I am Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin."

"Erik Lehnsherr," was the reply that accompanied the handshake and Piotr made sure that he didn't say "I know."

The children called out for their teacher and Erik stood up. "Perhaps you would like to join us for a little while? This way, we can have an even number and I won't have to play and referee at the same time."

"I am expected somewhere," Piotr said, looking at his watch, even as the dismay in his voice was genuine. He wondered what Xavier would think. "But maybe another time?"

"We'll be here," Erik told him cheerfully. "And I hope that your... philosophical question resolves itself. Have a good day."

With that, he tossed his coffee in the garbage pail and ran off to the impatiently waiting children. Piotr watched him examine the orange pylons that made up the goals and then stood up himself, making sure he had everything with him before heading back in the direction he had come. For the first time in what felt like a long time, where he was going suddenly seemed clear.

  
  


* * *

  



	3. All Through the Night

Acts of Contrition: Chapter Two 

* * *

"... for sex!" Ororo was exclaiming as Piotr entered the kitchen. She was sitting at the table with Henry, with her feet in his lap, and cradling a mug of hot chai in her hands. Piotr wrinkled his nose at the too-sweet smell. "I mean, the _Professor_."

"You sound as if you are more aghast that the guy accused the Professor of being sexually active than anything else," Henry replied with patient amusement, not looking up from the _Times_ crossword open in front of him. It was Thursday, which meant that Henry could probably finish almost all of it without resorting to randomly attacking unsuspecting teammates and demanding seven letter words for a type of Indonesian curry that had an O as the fifth letter. 

Piotr smiled a greeting as he headed towards the refrigerator to make lunch. He had heard this story before from Scott, who had heard it from Jean, who had heard it from one of the principals. Post-human existence had not evolved past gossip, obviously. 

Earlier in the week, Ororo and Xavier had headed into the city to try to recruit someone for the team. The young man in question was apparently of the right age and power level, but hadn't been interested despite, according to what Scott's had reported, any sign of alternative options. 

"You yourself have been the receiver of unwanted attentions," Henry went on when Ororo only pursed her lips in mute disapproval. "Say the young man has been on the streets for a long time, especially here. He's probably seen enough of the unsavory element to have earned the right to some suspicion." 

Days later, Ororo, seemingly forgetting her own initial reluctance to join the team, was still offended by the exchange and Piotr, the longer he thought about it, wondered why. Ororo, as an attractive female quite used to traveling alone through life, should have been sympathetic to the young man's wrong-but-plausible conclusion. But she hadn't been, nor was she willing to forgive the anonymous fellow for his lack of trust. 

"It's just..." Ororo sighed eloquently, holding out a hand in silent demand for a stalk of the celery Piotr was holding. He pointed it towards the sink to indicate that he'd wash it first and she put her hand back over the lip of her mug. "The Professor's famous now. Everyone knows who he is and what he does."

"Like being famous ever stopped anyone from being a perv," Bobby pointed out as he entered the kitchen holding a magazine. Piotr was sure that Bobby had some sort of tracking device to monitor when three or more people congregated in the kitchen - it kept him from ever having to make lunch for himself. Bobby dropped himself artlessly into a chair across from Henry and stuck his tongue out when Ororo made a sour face at him. "He could have seen you and the Professor and thought you were part of the harem or something. Like Hugh Hefner."

"Robert," Henry intoned. "Please."

Piotr finished washing the celery stalks and handed one to Ororo, who accepted it with a smile. 

It was a sunny day and the south-facing windows from the kitchen let the light stream in. Moments like these were almost odd for their ordinary nature. Housemates enjoying an afternoon off, although technically Ororo and Bobby both had lessons this afternoon and studying to do in preparation for them. There was nothing about the scene that screamed 'mutant militia at play', no invisible weight bearing down upon them in the form of the hate and fear of the world they strove to protect and better. They were eating lunch and doing crossword puzzles and Scott was off traipsing through the park with his Boys & Girls Club charges and Jean was out shopping after having spent the morning with her FBI files on missing children. It was all perfectly _normal_ and actually rather nice and almost familial in a way the house rarely was and nobody was thinking about the bloody fetus of an aborted mutant baby that had been mailed in a plastic bag to the Professor yesterday morning. 

The Professor usually ignored such 'presents' from the anti-mutant groups and disposed of them without comment, but this time he had ruefully commented about how Rusty had finally stopped being the focus of the rabble rousers and could rest in peace now that the X-Men were back to being the targets. 

It hadn't taken long for Gatling to be all but been forgotten by the masses, dropped by the newspapers like the old news it was. Piotr, too, had managed to push it back in his mind after seeing Magneto. Rusty was dead, the prime time television live proceedings from the courtroom cancelled, and there were new, more glamorous things to report. Especially as the feds seemed to be going to great lengths to cover up what happened. As far as the public knew, Rusty had been killed by nervous, overanxious guards after his power had spiked out of control during his recreation hour outdoors. There had been no mention of the X-Men busting in to the prison and taking out a dozen guards - Cyclops's optic blasts had single-handedly funded the retirement of some lucky orthopedic surgeon specializing in knees - before storming the main building itself and getting Rusty out, but only as far as the courtyard before the cavalry had arrived. Even though he had been in his metal form at the time, Piotr still carried the bruises from the semiautomatic rifle clips that had been emptied into his chest as he had carried the drugged Rusty towards the plane. His attempt to provide shielding had been imperfect, however, and Rusty had been hit in the thigh. The shock and pain of the wound had caused Rusty to lash out, without control and without intent, and _that_ was when the true inferno had erupted. 

"So what's for lunch?" Bobby asked hopefully. 

"Tunafish," Piotr replied, placing the can he had retrieved from the cabinet in front of Bobby. "Open it over the sink so that it can drain."

Bobby sighed at the indignity and Ororo pointed imperiously towards the sink with what was left of her celery while Henry finally looked up and chuckled at the situation. 

"Why don't we have an electric can opener here?" Bobby asked rhetorically as he rummaged through the drawer. "We have a VR training room, our own medical facility, our own _Blackbird_, and no electric can opener. There's something majorly wrong with that."

Rusty's immolation had been almost instantaneous and absolutely uncontrollable. The bricks themselves had started to melt, the fences reduced to pools of liquid and chunks of slag, and the X-Men had had to stop running and start rescuing the guards from the blaze. Ororo's rain and Jean's telekinesis and Henry's agility and, most importantly, Bobby's unpanicked work had been enough to prevent fatalities, but only just. Scott had had to provide cover for Piotr to run with the hysterical Rusty, the boy too delirious from the drugs and the pain from his wound and the euphoria of such unbridled use of his powers that he couldn't do much more than sob in Piotr's arms about how this was why he deserved to die for what he had done. 

Piotr had had to take the long way around after the prison's emergency vehicles had blocked the most direct route back to the plane, the black smoke and stink of burning rubber and flesh and metal and building materials making it hard to see and harder to move with confidence. But Piotr had persisted and it was that persistence - not to mention the persistent clink of bullets hitting his back - that had kept him from seeing cover and waiting out the worst of the attack. So instead of hunkering down, he had kept running and tripped over something (some_one_, really, although Piotr didn't like to dwell on that) and fallen, twisting so that he landed on his back instead of Rusty. The double-sided impact of ground and teenager meeting organic steel body pressed the wind out of him and he had had to suck in the putrid smoke and feel it burn acridly in his lungs. He had coughed and Rusty had rolled off of him with a slurred apology and then had disappeared into the smoke. 

"You're putting carrots in it?" Bobby asked, eyebrows raised in that skeptical way he had as he cranked the hand-held can opener. But for all of his griping, Bobby finished opening the can and then flipped it over in the sink smoothly, squeezing the lid down to expedite the process and making a disgusted face as the tuna juice dripped from his fingers.

"If you don't like it, you can always make yourself something else," Piotr told him calmly as he sliced the carrots in quarters lengthwise. 

"I didn't say that," Bobby replied easily as he put the drained can next to the cutting board Piotr was using. "It's just that that's not how my mom makes it. Hers is all smooth and mayonnaise-y. But change is good. I like change. We're X-Men and we're all about change."

Behind them, Henry made a noise too complicated to decipher and when Piotr turned to look, Ororo gave him an expression filled with both regret and humor. She didn't know, either, whether Henry was thinking of himself or of Bobby's attempts to talk himself out of trouble.

Rusty had been about Bobby's size, but without the litheness. Drugged and wounded and hiccupping on his tears, he shouldn't have been able to get far, let alone escape Piotr's search. But he had and Piotr hadn't found him again until one of the searchlights had cut through the smoke and found Rusty swaying on his feet, alone in his anguish and begging over and over again to die. And the guards had obliged, riddling the boy with bullets and Piotr hadn't been able to look away, even as Jean was screaming telepathically in his head to bug out, to get back to the plane before the guards realized that there were others still around. And just before Jean had resorted to commandeering his limbs as she had in Finland, Piotr had finally turned to run, idly noticing that the fire was no less out of control for its creator's death. 

"Go get some toast out of the freezer," Piotr said, shaking his head to clear out the memory of Gatling and instead focusing on Bobby's terminal laziness. It was charming in its own way as he wasn't malicious about it and he never let it get too obvious. The Professor often said that if Bobby ever realized how much work he put into getting out of work, he'd be dumbstruck at the inefficiency. 

"_Bread_, Piotr," Bobby sighed tiredly as he went to the large refrigerator. "It's bread, not toast. That's why we have a toaster. It turns bread into toast."

"That _bread_ is only good for toast," Piotr replied, making a face at the pre-sliced, factory-produced loaf. "It should never be used as bread. It shouldn't even be called bread - it is disrespectful to the real thing."

Bobby sighed extravagantly and indulgently and turned to poke around in the freezer. "Oooh, we have those onion roll thingies. How about that?"

Lunch itself was anticlimactic after the fuss involved in making it - Bobby's decision to defrost the rolls in the microwave before putting them in the toaster was met with meteorological disapproval from Ororo, who didn't want the microwave smelling like onions. Bobby in turn froze her tea and further retaliation was only averted by Henry's suggestion that he and 'Ro try out the new deli that had opened on the main road into town. Jean returned to the mansion bearing takeout containers as Piotr watched Bobby deposit their dishes in the dishwasher ("I prepared, you clean." "But..." "If you had wanted to make lunch, I would have let you." "I hate loading the dishwasher." "Then don't eat.") and set herself up comfortably in the space Henry had abandoned. 

"See, that's what I should do - takeout," Bobby told Piotr as he wiped off his hands. "No dishes. Or maybe paper plates."

"Uh-huh," Jean snorted. "Takeout means you'd have to _pay_ for your meals, genius. And tip the delivery guy because nobody's driving you into town three times a day."

"It's an idea with potential," Bobby insisted, sitting back down at the table and pulling one of the newspapers out from under the one Jean was reading; she had brought the stack from the living room. The Professor had all of the local newspapers delivered daily and the team was expected to read at least one of them. Henry went through them all and although Piotr had his doubts about how much 'Ro got through, the rest of them had no problems following Xavier's dictum. Piotr tried to avoid the _Times_, as did Bobby, although for different reasons. Bobby just didn't like their sports section. 

As was his wont, Piotr made a pot of tea. He knew Jean would take a cup - with two spoonfuls of sugar - and Bobby would make a face before declining. The three of them were sitting at the table reading when they heard the door that lead from the garage open and close loudly. 

"What do you mean 'it broke'?... Alex, you are _such_ an idi... I don't think so, but I'll ask," Scott was saying with some aggravation into his cell phone as he appeared in the doorway. He had a bag full of groceries in one hand and the phone in the other, which meant he had closed the door with his foot and which in turn explained the slammed door. Scott was usually hyper aware of slamming doors and closing drawers too loudly - a legacy from the time right after his power had manifested, the Professor had once explained vaguely. Piotr had never gotten any further details.

A quick check of the clock and simple addition told Piotr that it was not quite dinnertime at Oxford, where Alex was in his third term at Balliol. The Professor had produced fake documentation - Alex was now barely eighteen and, while courtesy of his school's course load he had technically been weeks away from completing all of the requirements for graduation in New York State, he had still been a year from actually getting his high school diploma when he had been forced to abandon his life. 

Scott held the phone away from his mouth. "Anyone seen Henry?"

Piotr, teacup to his lips, shrugged his ignorance. Bobby answered "with Ro" and waggled his eyebrows lasciviously, and Jean tilted her head in that 'I'm being a telepath way'.

Alex was still a touchy subject for the team and that was no small part of why he had only been back to the mansion once since his arrival. Scott's relationship with his brother was very much a work in progress, but while both he and Alex were quick to admit that they were best with distance between them, there seemed (most days) to be a genuine basis for some sort of place for each other in their futures. Of the others, Piotr got along with Alex the best - a fact both brothers made use of and Piotr too often found himself listening to one gripe about the other. Henry was rather pragmatic - not to mention pleased with his own role in developing the equipment Alex used to control his mutation - while both Jean and Ororo were at best coolly civil when Alex became the subject of conversation. The girls, Piotr knew, had not forgiven Alex his past as a lieutenant for the Friends of Humanity. Bobby, on the other hand, had seemingly forgiven all. The youngest of them, he was also the least jaded and had had the most protected childhood - it gave him an optimism about human nature that even his time with the X-Men hadn't cured. Alex had been bad, but so had Piotr and Logan and they had turned out all right. 

"He says that the chain wasn't important," she reported after a moment, the fogginess of her expression clearing as she returned her attention to her chopsticks and leftover pad thai. 

Piotr turned his head to see Scott's reaction. When wearing the light visor that was little more than a set of fortified sunglasses, Scott's features were visible and Piotr caught the minute furrowing of his eyebrows and the accompanying tightness around the eyes, both gone in a blink. He had never asked Scott about the telepathic link he shared with Jean, but Piotr sometimes wondered how much Scott wanted it versus how much Jean did. 

"You're safe," Scott told his brother and leaned against the fridge where he had just taken out a bottle of iced tea. "But next time tuck it _in_ if you're going to be all British and play rugby. Or take it off... No... I'm not telling you what to do..." A sigh that Piotr knew was Scott realizing that a quarrel with Alex was inevitable and Scott pushed off the fridge and headed out of the kitchen, the sound of protestations fading into the distance. 

Alex was the only family member who knew of what had really happened with Weapon X - Bobby's and Jean's parents had been outright lied to - and had taken the news with characteristic outrage. Scott had joked about how Alex was simply proprietary over his brother's unhappiness ("He's just jealous that someone else got to run me through the wringer before he did"), but he knew - and Piotr knew as well - that Alex had been genuinely worried about the disappearance. He was even more upset that nothing had been done to prevent that sort of thing from occurring again. Alex was proactive by nature - the FoH had been just one example of his wanting to do instead of watch and wait. He didn't understand Xavier's and (by extension) Scott's reluctance to either seek revenge or send out some sort of warning that mutants weren't there to be plucked up and used like a sheep or a pig. It was a passionate discussion when Piotr exchanged emails with Alex, but it was a guaranteed screaming match should the brothers get into it on the phone. 

Jean and Bobby were gone by the time Scott returned to raid the fruit bin. Piotr looked up from the _Sun_ and waited. 

"The word for the day is 'fratricide'," Scott groused, sitting down heavily in the chair two seats away from Piotr. He put the apple down on the table and took off his glasses, holding them in his left hand as he massaged the bridge of his nose with the right. He put them back on before speaking again. "_Man_, I don't know why I let him get under my skin like that. It's like arguing with Magneto. At least he's on our side now and I don't have to worry about him trying to kill me any more."

Piotr nearly choked on his cookie. Did Scott know?

"What?" Scott asked, looking mildly embarrassed. "Yeah, yeah, knowing better doesn't mean squat if I don't apply it. I'm supposed to be the big brother."

Reaching for his teacup without looking at it, Piotr tried to cover up the surprise Scott had obviously misinterpreted as disapproval. Scott didn't know and Piotr wasn't sure if he was glad for it. Scott's ignorance was just that much more evidence that Xavier wasn't being as forthcoming as he should be, and while that was disappointing, it wasn't surprising by this stage. On the other hand, had Scott known that Magneto was alive and well and living in Queens but hadn't said anything, then Piotr would have had cause for concern. The Professor keeps secrets from them; Scott shouldn't. Not about things like this. 

And yet he couldn't bring himself to hold himself to the same standard. 

He should tell Scott about Magneto. Scott was their field leader - a position Piotr seemed to take more seriously than did the Professor - and he was his friend. As close to a friend as he had here. Scott was also a very good strategist, a much better planner than he himself was and yet... and yet. Scott was an optimist by nature, but a pessimist by nurture - something in his childhood had forever robbed him of the ability to see the glass as half-full and still Scott could never look at the world with truly cold calculation. That was precisely what made him so good in the field and it was also what Piotr feared could hamper any discussion about the Professor - he doubted that Scott would see danger where he himself did unless there was evidence that couldn't be dissected any other way because the message itself was so terrible. Scott did not trust easily or well, but he was still the one who had forgiven Xavier for messing with his mind and sending him off to Magneto. Piotr knew himself incapable of such magnanimity and appreciated the depth of the connection between Scott and the Professor; from what he knew, the time at the mansion when it had just been the three of them - Jean, Scott, and Xavier - had been a much more intimate time and bonds forged then would take effort to break. Experience told Piotr that there was going to be only one chance to express his reservations to Scott and be believed, one chance to sound concerned and lay out why before he was labeled as paranoid or overly suspicious and any further revelations dismissed. He had to get this right. 

That was why he let Scott slap his hand on the table, stand up, and take his apple out to the back porch without so much more than a grunt of acknowledgement at the departure. 

Knowing that he would be up late for patrols, Piotr took a nap in the afternoon and was still working the grogginess from his body when Xavier summoned him into his office to discuss the plan for the night. With the Wolverine still elsewhere, there was only him to cover a lot of ground. The other hero-type vigilantes (Jean had balked at the term, but Scott had pointed out that as long as they were operating without a government mandate, they were vigilantes, too) tended towards the more glamorous Manhattan and Piotr and Logan had usually taken spots in the Bronx and in Westchester itself. 

Within limits, the Professor let them chart their own courses. For Logan, that usually meant scouting out neighborhoods where he was guaranteed a brawl or two, but Piotr preferred to work as a deterrent without force. He didn't crave destruction the way the Wolverine did and certainly didn't have the taste for conflict that the smaller man had. He could fight well and would do so without hesitation if provoked into action, but he didn't enjoy it. It was why, despite the perfect opportunity to indulge his slow-simmering crush on Logan, Piotr usually opted to work alone. He tended towards neighborhoods on the edge - those teetering on the abyss and those trying to climb out of it. It was where he felt he could do the most good and provide the most effective use of his energies. Keeping the element that could save a neighborhood safe - and thus present - as opposed to punishing those who had destroyed or taken advantage of someone else's destruction. 

Unsurprisingly, Xavier hadn't asked him to change his modus operandi while Logan was away. Even before his suspicions of the Professor had grown too heavy to ignore, Piotr had known that Xavier wasn't a fan of brute force, certainly not the aggressive pursuit of using such. Logan had a need that required exhausting before it could be purged, Xavier had said during one of those odd moments of divulging that he did where he confided something about one of his pupils to another - Piotr wasn't so vain as to think that he was the only recipient of these bits of information - that had the uncomfortable feel of a secret revealed. Piotr had nodded at the time without saying anything and had privately wondered what observations about himself the Professor passed on to his teammates. 

Dinner was a group affair with everyone's presence required. They ate later than did most Americans, well after the evening news had finished. It was a legacy of having lived in Europe for many years, Xavier had explained at the beginning, but it also worked from the post-human standpoint. Half of the team had accelerated metabolisms and that meant a second lunch in most cases and the more common dinner hour would have been too early to eat after that additional meal. 

As such, Piotr had time only to watch a little of the Detroit-New Jersey game on television as he finished his post-meal coffee before he had to suit up and leave. After an early misadventure with the radio he was supposed to wear in order to contact the police to pick up any miscreants apprehended, Piotr had been given a much smaller device with a much stronger clip. Henry had even wired in a tiny radio receiver so that Piotr could listen to his hockey games or to music while on patrol. 

The Red Wings had won 3-1 before Colossus had been required to put in an appearance.

  


* * *

  


Emma Frost was tired. She was also mildly hung over, if the dehydration and slightly feverish ache were any indications. Reaching with none of her usual grace towards the glass of water on her nightstand, she groaned at the numbers glowing on the clock and at the fact that alcohol turned to sugar and she was never going to be able to get back to sleep. 

The after-party for the movie premiere had featured a spectacular amount of champagne - one of the key scenes in the (tiresome, unremarkable, uninventive) flick had taken place over snifters of brandy and involved an allegedly witty discourse on champagne that had been key in uniting the couple and had been referenced in the saccharine-sweet ending. And post-premiere parties being marketing events, that was only one of the tie-ins to the to the romantic comedy that was neither romantic nor comedy. The goody bag was still on the table by her couch, crammed full with trinkets and free passes and little souvenirs that were meant to bribe her into speaking well of the film and its creators but would in fact be given to the hired help - Frosts didn't use gift certificates and Emma wasn't going to wear any perfume that was cheap enough to be given out, even if the goody bag was Kate Spade. 

There had been a spectacular amount of champagne and Emma liked to drink. Not so much as to appear unladylike - she hadn't had all those lessons in deportment and endless pleas from her beleaguered parents and nannies for nothing - but enough. Enough to make her forget about how much she hated most of the other people in the room, the men concerned only with improving their self-image by getting photographed with the right star and sleeping with the right socialite and the women obsessing with their looks and pondering botox and whether the little spotty rash around their eyes from puking their dinners up was showing through their foundation. Enough, in other words, to stop remembering that there was nothing worse in the world than being a telepath in a room full of shallow people. 

Emma was under no delusions as to her own depth. She was a child of privilege - Frost Industries hadn't had a fiscal year in the red since the Great Depression - and lived the life thoroughly and well. If it weren't for her telepathy and the introspection that came with it, she'd be no different from Adrienne and all of the other scions of society their age. She was at all the right parties, had attended all the right schools, gotten into the right kinds of trouble, and did all the other things that being a young, beautiful heiress required. She did them so well that she and Adrienne had transcended "heiresses" and were known in their own rights - they were celebrities, 'it girls', staples of gossip magazines in New York and London and everywhere else that mattered, identified by their own names and not "daughters of". But it was a status that took work to achieve and even more to maintain. 

Being a socialite was a job, in a sense. A mostly enjoyable if occasionally tiresome one, but a busy one. It took energy to live a life of luxury, to spend all your time doing things that had the only purpose of proving that you had nothing important to do. Like earn a living. On the tax returns that she only saw when they were presented to her to sign, Emma was always tempted to put "object of envy" on the line for listing her occupation instead of whatever euphemism the family's accountant had devised to sum up her days.

It would probably have been a happy existence of blithe unconcern, meaningless sex with actors, and the occasional photo of her dancing on tables if it weren't for the damned telepathy, which seemed intent on engaging her conscience by exposing her to the innermost thoughts of people she'd never have known well enough to ask after. She wasn't supposed to notice other people - let alone the people who worked for her and her family - and yet she could not avoid them and their _mundane_ concerns. 

Hiding her telepathy wasn't hard - not even her own family knew. Emma was sure it was really just denial on her parents' part; early on, when her control had been nonexistent and she was reacting to unvoiced thoughts, it would have been hard to pass her behavior off as the same sort of 'hearing voices' that had consigned Great-Aunt Katherine to a spinster's life out of the public eye on Cape Cod. 

Now, for the most part, she could control it; it had been years since she had lived with the terror that she would be drowned by the never-ending waves of consciousnesses crashing down upon her. In fact, after years of self-taught control and exercise, she could not only comfortably mingle in crowded rooms, but she could also make use of her abilities. Making people see what they wanted to see was easy, plucking information out of people's head even easier. It was a resource, however, and not a crutch. She was Emma Frost and she didn't need to toy with someone's mind to make them realize just how special she was.

It was just as well that hiding her telepathy was easy since proper society wasn't ready for mutant debutantes. Mutants weren't like blacks and gays and other minorities that were causes to raise money for but not to bring into the family; mutants were dangerous. Magneto and his merry band of homicidal freaks had posed a much greater threat to the order of things than any political scandal or outing or any of the race-baiting demagogues cashing in on WASP guilt that New York seemed to produce with such ease. He had killed and was continuing to do so from beyond the grave - the Brotherhood was still doing its bloody best to continue his work. Even the good guys weren't. The X-Men were an army of youthful misfits no less terrifying for their aesthetic advantages over the Brotherhood, taking the laws into their own hands instead of breaking them and extorting their way to acceptance through 'good deeds' that were really clean-ups of problems they were mostly the cause of. 

Emma found the whole mutant question something of a farce, an elaborate con game constructed by the next wave of opportunists. She didn't self-identify as a mutant, not even when the Sentinels had been prowling the skies as the result of the infantile fear birthed as well-funded hatred of some backwater senators and radical lobbyists. She happened to be a mutant, but it didn't define her and she found herself cynically suspicious of those who did. 

'Homo superior' was a most presumptuous phrase and, like 'master race' before it, only left the bearer open to ridicule. Being a mutant didn't guarantee that you would be smart or good or talented or useful - or, conversely, evil and dangerous, which had been the justification of the Sentinel program. 

Mutation didn't give you anything that automatically meant that you should be able to breeze through the rest of civilization like someone with an American Express Black card at Bendel's, despite the best attempts of the left. It was an accident in most cases, and shouldn't be rewarded - or punished - as on par with breeding or brains or bank accounts. All of the privilege that came from being a Frost was the interest paid on the backbreaking work done by one of her forbearers, not the result of her parents standing too close to a nuclear power plant. Entitlement because of genetic structure was no more palatable than because of color or race or gender - it cheapened everything it touched. 

She had done research and reading - all on the sly, away from anyone who might want to know why a Frost was interested in mutation. Research was still too new to be conclusive, but mutancy seemed to be a dominant trait, impossible to wash out of the family bloodline even after a few generations, and there was not yet a correlation between the mutations of parents and children. All the more reason to make damned sure she never forgot her birth control - one little accident and she could have a child who could not only not pass as human, but could also expose her as well. 

Getting exposed doing her latest reading wasn't going to be much of a fear - Charles Xavier and his utopian ideas were all over the magazines. Emma felt sorry for Xavier, a well-intentioned man who obviously didn't realize that he was being laughed at and not with. She had read his earlier works on mutation as it applied to mental abilities and it was by far the best in the field, so much clearer and with such resonance that Emma was quite sure that Xavier himself was a mutant with some sort of psionic powers - not all of his theories could have arrived on the back of that little white trash telepath Jean Grey. 

But if Xavier's earlier work was notable for its sharpness and focus and simple utilitarianism - some of the articles had almost been written as guidebooks for closeted mutants - it was all gone now. The _Times_ Magazine had printed an excerpt and Emma had at first thought it a parody. Instead of genetic research explained in layman's terms, there was now a "post-human" recreation of the world in Xavier's image. It wasn't even advocating tolerance or the acceptance of mutants into society - it was an all-out declaration of a new world order, as if by being a mutant alone was enough to qualify Xavier to speak authoritatively and expertly on everything from economics to agriculture. 

The resentment and suspicion had been immediate - except among the hard-core liberals, Xavier's cache of goodwill had been spent and he was viewed as a joke, an entertainment for breaking up the winter doldrums. Especially with Magneto dead, "Post-human" anything was being taken no more seriously than macrobiotic diets and the kabala studies of movie stars. Unlike other rich dotty folk, however, Xavier didn't have a support network to fall back upon. New York society knew who was one of theirs and who wasn't and Xavier, despite the impeccable manners and estate up in Westchester, wasn't one of theirs. He was 'found money', not made money and not old money - the Frosts were members in good standing of the Hellfire Club and it was known that some of the other club members (most of them prone to pseudo-mystical fads and fashions) had given him money for some project, probably to see if they couldn't be made into mutants or something silly like that. Sebastian Shaw was one of them and Emma knew him well enough that he'd spend any amount of money for a good joke - and setting Xavier up to fail so spectacularly and so publicly would be exactly the kind of joke Shaw loved. 

Thinking of Shaw made Emma remember his son Shinobi, the result of some affair Sebastian had had during some business trip to Tokyo. Shinobi had been acknowledged and served his father as the bastard heir to the Shaw fortune, displaying all of the business acumen and animal magnetism that made Shaw père such a force, all wrapped up in a stunning package of grace and sleekness where his father was burly and solid. But Shinobi was a shark, a cool, smooth, dangerous, beautiful young man who intrigued Emma greatly. He didn't play the society games the way Emma did, never appearing at celebrity events except when absolutely necessary and certainly never frolicking with the young, beautiful, and famous. He had taken to bed just enough women in their circle that his heterosexual proclivities were known (prodigious talent and knows it, seemed to be the consensus opinion, along with a rather pronounced disinterest in conversation before or after), but he seemed to fill his needs elsewhere. Emma found her fascination with him amusing and was sure its persistence was due to its lack of resolution - the minute she got a moment to skim his thoughts, he'd stop being nearly so interesting. Just another pretty face.

Another pretty face was not what Emma was going to be if she didn't make a better effort to get some sleep. Relying on nature to take its course was all well and good, but being a telepath had its uses and she had picked up a few tricks along the way and was soon back to a light doze, which would be sufficient. 

  


* * *

  


Piotr found himself looking at his watch and sighing. Patrol normally ended at three, but he had agreed to stay out until four while Logan was gone - not that an hour more of his lurking presence was going to make much of a difference, but it made Xavier happy. Criminals liked to stay up late, but not usually all night and as the minutes dwindled down, Piotr mused that all good bad guys must be home safe in their beds. 

The evening had been slow - it was that part of the fall where the days clung to autumn but the nights had already welcomed winter with open arms and it had felt like nobody had wanted to be out in the cold - there had been a couple of foiled attacks in dark alleys, but between the weather and the bright light of the full moon, there hadn't been a lot of action. 

He had started on the Grand Concourse, looking especially out of place with his pale skin and tremendous bulk as he had moved among the pedestrians, turning onto Fordham Road as his footsteps fell into accidental rhythm with the merengue blaring out of car stereos and the boomboxes that were perched, regardless of weather, in front of storefronts and on windowsills alike. Merengue had a pace meant for an energetic dance - it sounded like a gallop to Piotr's foreign ears, too quick for the footfalls from his long legs and yet he couldn't shake the cadence; he'd pass from one audio source to another, each one a different tune but all in the same tempo and creating a cacophony that had melted together seamlessly as he had climbed the slow hill up towards Fordham University. 

The blocks by the Concourse had been busy with commercial concerns, cars double-parked even as the hour had crept towards midnight and kids could be heard laughing and yelling even though it was a school night. Little take-out joints with handwritten signs in block-printed Spanish offering the best of whatever national cuisine they had. Piotr had wished he was better able to identify flags - those were usually the only indicator of whether he was smelling the mostly tantalizing aromas of Peruvian or Ecuadorian or Dominican food. He had taken this route before and had stopped in a couple of these places. It was hearty food, prepared by the same principles that had governed food preparation back home - enough starch (here it was plantains and saffron-tinted rice) could cover up the paucity of whatever the main dish actually was. It was cheap, certainly by the pound with the large styrofoam containers brimming with rice, and hot and greasy and good. But Piotr hadn't stopped in any of the restaurants tonight; on his last tour through the area he had noticed a Jamaican eatery on Tremont that was open all night and had decided to try it out. 

The taste of jerk chicken and beef patty, washed down with homemade ginger beer was long gone now, though, and with the circuit of his patrol almost complete, Piotr walked quickly up the street, turning sharply at what ended up being a glass bottle falling out of an overloaded garbage can. It had been a slow night and the energy he had stored in anticipation of action was frittering away inside him, mixing badly with the caffeine from his last cup of coffee to make him edgy and a little restless. 

"Well if it isn't the X-Men's own housebroken Siberian husky," a familiar voice sneered as it breezed by. Too late, Piotr put his arm out in an attempt to swat at Quicksilver. 

"What do you want, Pietro?" Piotr sighed, standing still. Without turning his head, he looked around. Wherever one twin was, the other couldn't be that far away. 

"I'm right here," Wanda said with a smile, stepping out of the shadow of a recessed doorway. "And we came here to talk."

Piotr didn't bother to hide his skepticism. Not tracking him down at the mansion, instead waylaying him in the middle of the Bronx in the middle of the night... "About what?"

"The future," Pietro said as he came to a sudden stop right in front of Piotr. "And plans for it."

Wanda stepped gracefully down the stairs. For all of Pietro's kinetic buzz, the tension that seemed to vibrate through him even when he stood still, Wanda's was cultivated poise, the not-quite-natural elegance of a woman who had been raised in the company of men and had come to understand her feminine charms later than might be expected. 

"I'm not going to join the Brotherhood," Piotr said flatly, looking down at Pietro, who made a face.

"Hear us out, Piotr," Wanda implored with a half-sigh, circling around him to lean against the limestone banister. She moved in counterpoint to Pietro, Piotr realized. He had had time to study the ballet of confrontation from his time at Boris's side, both on business calls and the endless days and nights spent sitting in restaurants that served as offices. The twins kept in motion because they didn't want to be pinned down by his gaze; it kept them from having either to meet it or to squirm out from under it. A subtle dishonesty that was nonetheless coupled with an honest anxiety; there was something they truly wanted him to hear and understand and they were worried that he wouldn't. 

Piotr had never gotten a good sense of the twins' personalities and had difficulty reading their motives, something that made him edgy in their presence. They were their father's children, but was their father Erik or Magneto - or did they not distinguish? 

Scott, who had known them during his time in the Savage Land, had not spoken ill of them (apart from his obvious discomfort at being used in the drama between Pietro and Magneto and Wanda's crush). He had said that dealing with Pietro could be like dealing with Jean or Henry when they were being their most self-absorbed - her telepathy and his brilliance could make them cranky and impatient with everyone else's limitations. So it was with Pietro's speed - everyone else took too long to live - with the added twist that the one person Pietro desperately wanted to acknowledge his skills - Magneto - made a practice of not doing so. 

"How much do you know about Xavier?" Wanda asked from his right side. She was looking at him thoughtfully. Piotr had always imagined her as some sort of Shakespearean character - an Ophelia or a Violetta or a Hero or a Juliet, trapped in the stories of the men in her life, a victim of fate and chance both. But Wanda looked to be no victim here. A Beatrice maybe, or a Katherine - responsible for her own situation and confident of her own mind. "About where he gets his money or what his 'dream' really is?"

He tilted his head. Money had never really been a consideration; there had never been a shortage and no talk ever of a budget. If they didn't have the usual complement of domestics and visible trappings of wealth that were par for the course in marble-coated Salem Center Hills, it was for security reasons - getting a maid for a mutant paramilitary unit wasn't exactly as easy as placing an ad. 

"He's an opportunist," Pietro said to his left. Pietro talked quickly, although not too fast to be understood, his words clipped as if he were impatient getting them out. "A grifter. He doesn't come from money - he gets in tight with those who do."

"But..." Piotr didn't know what to make of the news - if it was in fact news and not just misinformation; he didn't know if the twins were being truthful and to what purpose if they weren't. Xavier acted like Piotr had always imagined wealthy people to act - _real_ wealthy people, not the over-funded boors raised to princedoms that the Russian mafia produced. The Professor was more than erudite; he was cultured and knowledgeable about all sorts of things that were genuinely irrelevant to the working classes. The mansion had obviously grown old in _someone's_ family and Piotr had always assumed that it had been Xavier's. 

"How do you know? You must have been just children when your father was friends with the Professor."

A siren could be heard in the distance, the Doppler effect making it audible just how fast it must be traveling on the largely abandoned streets. In a neighborhood such as this, the streets were quiet in the middle of the night except where they weren't - almost any noise was a bad one, at least in these last few hours before people rose for early-morning shifts and returned home from overnight ones. 

"Children see a lot more than adults think," Wanda said with a not-so-casual shrug. She was not being blasé, but instead stating facts and hoping, it seemed, that Piotr would accept them as such. "We practically grew up with him and Uncle Charles was _not_ the financier for the expeditions to the Savage Land. He was the brains, perhaps, the practical one where Father was a dreamer. But he was betting with someone else's chips. Father shared his ambitions, but we knew who the bankroll was coming from."

"We weren't _supposed_ to know," Pietro added bitterly, his lips pursing as if the words were sour. He was standing in place now, if not necessarily still. "Or, at least, it wasn't supposed to matter. That's what Father and Uncle Charles said. Post-human society has more than its fair share of socialist tendencies and money was only a concern so long as we were living in the _human_ world. Post-human economics is mostly barter and the rest 'stone soup'."

Piotr snorted; it never failed to entertain him when anyone, especially those with money or power or both, failed to learn from the Soviet object lesson. But it wasn't really funny, not at all, and Piotr again wondered why the twins had come looking for him. Revenge? Or a deeper concern - if they were half as observant as they said they were, they would know much more about the plans Xavier and Magneto had created together. To Piotr, already realizing himself predisposed to look for the worst in the Professor, it was enough to keep him paying attention.

"_You_ know," Pietro went on, the scorn in his voice only partially aimed at Piotr. "You read the book. Or have you? It's a dreadful bore; it manages to be both turgid and fantastical all at once. Like a really bad science fiction novel. Or a dissertation on Star Trek. Worst five minutes I've spent in a while."

"Uncle Charles's charisma doesn't translate well into the written word," Wanda agreed, absently twirling a long, curling tress around her index finger. It was a surprisingly coquettish gesture considering her message. "He could charm a snake out of its basket in person, but..."

Behind Pietro and across the street, Piotr could see a man walking and staring openly at them, presumably wondering what three white people were doing standing on a street corner in this neighborhood in the middle of the night. While Wanda and Pietro were in street clothes - Wanda's costume would have drawn more than just a stare from a passerby - Piotr's own black uniform was anything but innocuous.

"So who do you think is helping the Professor now and why have you come to _me_ about it?" Piotr finally asked, turning back to Wanda as the pedestrian disappeared from view around a corner. Piotr wasn't worried about him calling the cops on them. 

"We _think_ that he has found some new hosts to be a parasite on," Pietro answered him. "New York is full of the rich and gullible. But the silent partners, if they're foolish enough to get involved with dear Uncle Charles, can wait." 

"We came to _you_ because of Finland," Wanda said, pushing off of the banister she had been leaning against and shrugging her coat back into place. Piotr frowned involuntarily both at the memory of what he had nearly done and the fact that the twins - the philosophical opposition - had remembered it even as his teammates and nominal boss had not.

"You're not cowed into pacifist jelly like the others," Pietro elaborated with a dark look that Piotr couldn't interpret. "You're not blinded by Xavier and can still see."

"See what?" He was starting to lose his patience with this little three-way tango. Especially since it was becoming obvious that whatever they wanted would be unable to be granted casually. Not with anything to do with Finland serving as a positive reference. The suspicion that he was being played was rising and he quelled it, for now.

"What's going on around you," Wanda replied, letting go of the tress twisted around her finger. "What's really going on."

"You want me to spy," Piotr finished flatly. "I won't betray the Professor." He spoke with a conviction he didn't feel, a loyalty that tasted plastic and wrong on his tongue. 

"For all you know, he's already betrayed you," Pietro retorted and Piotr looked at him sharply. "Come now, don't look surprised. We're speaking of a man who abandoned his wife and son to pursue his dreams and then killed the man he once held closer than a brother."

The angry retort died on Piotr's lips as he was reminded, yet again, of the secret he bore and his own conflict. If he had wondered about the rightness of keeping the twins ignorant of Magneto's survival, what now with the two here before him trying to throw his perception of the Professor into doubt... and succeeding. 

Piotr knew that he was listening to them because they were saying things he wanted to hear. If not necessarily the specifics, they were providing the external cause for doubt where Piotr had only been left with his own private concerns. He had _wanted_ someone else to be suspicious, too. He had wanted someone else to share his unease, to provide the good reason why he was looking this gift horse in the mouth - for what was this life of freedom from both Boris and Sentinels but a gift? - and make it not about his own inability to muster faith. But as much as he wanted the lonely voice of misgiving in his mind to swell into a chorus, he couldn't let himself be swayed by the twins' siren song. Even if what they were saying was true, they were no better than the Professor in that they were operating on a personal agenda. They weren't there to make sure he was informed and truly happy with his situation.

"You didn't know about the wife and child," Pietro accused, a slight smile playing on his lips. It was a full moon and they were near a streetlight and Piotr could see everything. "Moira and David. They live in Scotland. Moira was the money in that relationship. He left them when he ran off with our father. Of course, Father took us with him..."

"He's up to something, Piotr," Wanda said quietly. "He's up to something and we don't know what it is and we're sure it isn't good."

"What do you care of 'good'?" Piotr asked sharply, covering up his own disquiet with disdain that was just as valid. "The bomb in Tokyo. The bomb in Madrid. What you did to the EU assembly hall. You are terrorists, your father's children. You could have stopped when your father... There's nothing holding you to that life now but your own interests. How can you talk of 'good'?"

"There's nothing holding us to 'that life' but the alternative," Pietro snapped, his voice rising sharply. He looked around at the quiet street; all of the lights were out in the apartment buildings, all the shades were drawn. This was a neighborhood where most people put their mattresses on the floor to better avoid bullets coming through the window; peeping out at an argument was avoided at all cost.

"With Father dead, there is no good reason for us not to join _Uncle Charles_ and his little band of merry mutants," Pietro continued in a quieter voice. "For once in our lives, we'd like to be free."

"So you kill people to buy your freedom?" Piotr asked incredulously. 

"They're only humans," Pietro answered with a slight shrug. "But who are you, of all people, to pass judgment?"

The feelings of disbelief and disgust - "only humans"? - slid into outright shock of a much more personal nature. What did they know and how? 

"He brags, you know," Wanda answered the question that must have been written all over his face. "He bragged to Father and now to us. About how even the most dangerous mutants, if given free choice, side with him and his 'dream'. You, Piotr, the mafia enforcer turned charming spokesman, and the Wolverine."

He must have looked wounded as Wanda reached out and gently touched his arm. "The Wolverine is his masterpiece, the assassin he swayed through preaching his gospel... Uncle Charles has a bit of a Messiah complex. He thinks he's the harbinger of the new world and that his book will be the clarion call and the X-Men his Apostles. The Wolverine is his Paul, the assassin turned missionary. You are his Thomas."

"And Father was John the Baptist," Pietro added bitterly. Piotr could hear the genuine regret in the other man's voice. For all of Magneto's cruelty, he had been their father and they had loved him and that made the secret in his heart burn hotter. "Sent to pave the way and destined to die for the cause."

Piotr closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at Pietro's face. He felt ill, both from what the twins were saying about Xavier and from his own role in this drama. 

"He's up to something," Wanda repeated, this time making it sound not like an entreaty and instead like a pronouncement. "He helps us... Don't look surprised. He helps us and pretends to the world that he doesn't. He knows we're behind the Brotherhood, that we've been a part of it all along. And not only does he not turn us in to the authorities, but he also discusses strategy. Occasionally obliquely and always with the pretense that he disapproves, but..."

"You were almost witness to the last time," Pietro continued. "At the Guggenheim? You went off to the Frick, but had you stayed, you would have been party to the discussion."

The nausea increased; that was, of course, the day he had been brought to see Magneto. Piotr hadn't known what sort of conversation he had missed by not accepting the Professor's invitation to join the trio's progression through the museum. All of them knew of Xavier's history with the Lehnsherr family; Piotr had assumed that the afternoon was going to be spent reminiscing about gentler times and making polite discussion, not comparing strategy between the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants. If what the twins were saying was true, the Professor had gone from aiding and abetting two terrorists to taking Piotr to see his own pet murderer...

"He thinks he still has sway with us," Wanda said, laughing lightly at the irony. "He thinks that he is still our Dear Uncle Charles and that we take him as a source of wisdom and authority now that Father is dead."

"He thinks he's controlling the Brotherhood through us," Pietro snorted. "Guiding us gently and subtly, using our 'baser inclinations' towards his purpose. Like he does with you and the Wolverine. But instead of being showpieces like you two, we are the weapons doing all of the dirty work you're all too celebrity-ish for now, the nasty tasks that would break all of his fragile alliances should it be known that he's behind them. He's the one who passed on to us the information that it was Galtidex that had the patent on the gene-tracing technology that's used in Sentinels."

Piotr stared. The bomb the Brotherhood had set off in Tokyo's financial district had gone off in front of Galtidex's Japan headquarters.

"Disappointing, isn't it?" Pietro asked with a rueful cackle. "Post-human solutions are supposed to be so _enlightened_."

There was a silence then, a pause to absorb - for Piotr the news and for the twins his reaction - and the quiet was shattered by the beep of the radio clipped to Piotr's jacket.

"Yo, Colossus, you there?" Jean's voice sounded tinny in his earpiece. "It's a half-hour past when you're supposed to call in and say you're coming home. Answer me or I send Scott out to find you and he's going to be cranky that I've woken him up..."

Piotr nearly coughed with relief. Not only at the interruption, but also at the fact that Jean had used the radio system instead of just barging into his mind. Her telepathy could have found him even at this distance, but that was only because she was familiar with his mind. She had had such problems at the outset of their association that she had had to use the more traditional communication methods that everyone else needed. For a reason Piotr didn't know, but suspected had to do with finding out about the true reasons for the Wolverine's association with the X-Men, Jean had never switched from the walkie-talkies. 

"I'm here, Marvel Girl," Piotr responded after he activated his microphone. "All is well and I'm on my way. I just got distracted."

Wanda made an amused face at him that would have been charmingly flirtatious were they not who they were. 

"Okay. Marvel Girl out, then." A pause. "If you want to pick up some bagels on the way home..."

"I'll see."

"I like strawberry cream cheese."

"I know you do. Colossus out." Piotr turned off the microphone. 

"Good doggie," Pietro commended, but his voice held no rancor. Piotr glared at him anyway.

"Take this," Wanda said, reaching into her right coat pocket and retrieving a CD. She held it out to him. 

"What is it?" Piotr asked, not taking it. 

"All of the stuff that's not fit to print," Pietro answered. He sounded darkly gleeful. "Our side of the story, more or less. A few documents, some emails, some theories."

"Each file is encrypted," Wanda warned, extending the hand with the disc. Piotr took it. "The password to the encryption key file is 'Kharlamov' - Use the Russian typeset. I'm sure you have access to it."

Piotr looked at her face, making sustained eye contact for the first time. "Why?"

"Because he's up to something," she said simply. "Because just because my brother and I don't want do live among humans doesn't mean that we want them eradicated. Because you have both the strength and the courage. Because somebody has to."

Piotr looked at her closely and could see past the sincerity to the edge of desperation that she hadn't shown before. He had played his hand close and now, with no clear win, the twins had to hold on to hope. 

"We'll be in touch," Pietro promised and then he embraced his sister and the two of them disappeared in a breeze into the darkness.

Piotr put the disk in his pocket and, as the full realization of what had happened and what could happen settled upon him, he finished his tour and went to the hidden garage where he had parked the car.

  
  


* * *

  



	4. The Last Supper

The Last Supper

It was a lazy afternoon tucked in between a busy morning and a long night. They had had a brief training exercise in the morning, more just to warm up their muscles than accomplish anything, and a two-hour meeting during which Xavier had outlined the mission scheduled for this evening. It wasn't their first mission since Gatling, but it was the first one large enough in scope and scale to require the Blackbird and a week's worth of drilling on the finer points of evading gunfire. Currently, Xavier was off with Jean and Henry to an interview that would be televised on a cable news channel, Bobby was doing his homework, and Ororo was watching television. Piotr had brought his book out to the back porch where he knew Scott would be sunning himself.

"How would you define Xavier's dream?"

Scott hadn't been facing Piotr when the question had been asked, had instead been lying supine on the stairs, propped up on his elbows, head tilted back, as he soaked up the sun's rays that were so necessary to his powers. Head back, neck exposed, and arms akimbo as they braced him, it was a recumbent post, almost like a porn star except for the edge of tension that coursed through his frame, one that managed to display both his litheness as well as his strength. Scott was a beautiful young man, all the more so because he was both aware of his looks and even more aware that they could only take him so far.

"The integration of the species," he said without moving, sounding very much like he did when Scott was Cyclops and giving a public statement. "A world where humans and mutants can live without fear of each other."

Scott _hated_ giving public statements and was more than willing to foist off any and all PR duties on whoever else was at hand. Piotr had been his favorite understudy, but in the wake of Weapon X and Piotr's self-induced camera shyness, it had usually been Ororo or Jean until Xavier and his book-related publicity needs had made Scott's hunt for a willing victim unnecessary. However, there were times when it couldn't just be _any_ X-Man doing the talking, even Xavier, when it had to be Cyclops in his role as field leader, and Scott would brood for hours leading up to those. Not possessing Alex's rhetorical skills, Scott was much happier letting his actions be eloquent for him and could easily be flustered by a change in verbal tactics. Alex had tried to coach him, to make him see interviews like combat and learn to anticipate and defend and attack. But Scott was reluctant for some reason Piotr couldn't parse out and yet was sure was something far deeper than merely having to take advice from his younger brother.

"How far do you think the Professor would go to achieve that dream?"

It was a loaded question and Piotr knew it. There was no way Scott could answer that with the same sort of public relations pabulum he'd give to a reporter asking that question.

"As far as it takes," Scott finally said, sounding not at all like he found the question troubling. But Piotr knew differently and waited the three beats for Scott to raise his head and turn toward him, mouth pursed in a look of wry distaste. "But you're asking about specifics, aren't you?"

Piotr could only sigh. He had been waffling back and forth on whether to tell Scott about Magneto, even before he had been approached by the twins. The disc Wanda had handed him was full of damning information - if it were all genuine. It containted scanned copies of letters, old notebook pages, maps and blueprints of what the Savage Land's utopia should have been, a ten minute interview Erik Lehnsherr had done for a public television show almost ten years ago, the text of two of Xavier's first articles on genetic mutation, and photographs. Including one of teenaged Pietro and Wanda standing on either side of Erik (and, in civilian garb and with a smile on his face, it was most definitely Erik) mugging for the camera.1

He did wonder about the motives of Magneto's children. The twins claimed to be separatists, not out to cleanse the world of non-mutants but not willing to live among them, either. They sought to rebuild the Savage Land as a true sanctuary for mutants, not as a base from which to launch genocidal attacks. And yet there had been another incident the previous week. The palatial home of the head of the public worker's union had been torched a day after the Parisian city government had voted to require gene testing for civil service job candidates and the union had supported it.

Despite all this - or perhaps because of it - Piotr found himself wanting to believe the twins almost desperately, with a passion that he knew did not currently infuse his work for the X-Men. It was as if he were seeking confirmation of his faith in... in what? In his own instincts? In his ability to judge evidence impartially, irrespective of provenance? There had to be more to it than simple perversity that had him so eager to look for deception from his benefactor and to take the words of two terrorists over those of a man pledged to nonviolence. Still, the skeptic in him, the suspicious part of him that had been manipulated too many times and vowed never to let it happen again, was wondering if Wanda and Pietro were counting on just that reaction, if perhaps he were not jumping from one puppet-master to another.

"What is it?" Scott's voice was touched by a very slight impatience, as if he had already tried to draw Piotr's attention and failed.

When they had been first gathered together as a team, it hadn't taken long to see around Scott's glasses. His expressions were easily readable once you stopped focusing on the fact that you couldn't see his eyes. But Scott made sure that it worked both ways - he was startlingly observant and his head would swivel at tiny movements that nobody else's peripheral vision could pick up. He was a careful face watcher as well, and he read body language easily. Not that the rest of the team proved much in the way of ciphers. In a house with two telepaths, it was easy to forget that they were not the only ones who could see beyond the surface.

"How far would _you_ go for Xavier's dream?" Piotr asked before Scott could repeat the question.

A sigh of resignation as Scott sat up fully, back ramrod straight even as he rested his forearms on his thighs. "It's my dream, too. And that's not what you're asking. Or, not what you really want to ask."

Scott was a lot smarter than people gave him credit for. Especially the Professor. He was not especially suited to Xavier's pedagogical methods and tastes - he liked linear progress, direct narratives, logic, and anything that could be broken down into an equation and solved. He didn't like philosophy and grew frustrated with his inability to follow some of what Xavier's book called 'post-human approaches to learning processes'. And he had been both hurt and furious when Xavier's article had made public that inability.

"Machiavelli."

An almost-whimper this time. "You know, sometimes I really hate it that you talk to Alex so much. You're starting to sound like him. I was hoping it would go the other way."

Piotr chuckled; it was a frequent complaint and from more than just Scott. Alex got along with relative degrees of stiffness and formality with all of the X-Men and could only claim any sort of friendship with Piotr, a fact that made Scott not a little envious, especially when he was fighting with his brother.

"Means versus ends," he elaborated as Scott waited expectantly.

"I figured _that_ part out," Scott replied sourly as he dusted off his elbows and wiped his hands on his jeans in a belated bout of his usual fastidiousness. "Not quite sure why it's coming up now, unless this is you deciding that Cesare Borgia holds the key to you getting out of going to that Youth Day thing with the Professor next week."

Piotr tried to smile at the joke, but knew it wasn't convincing.

"Is this a general crisis of faith or are you freaking about something in particular?" Scott asked, tilting his head and looking at him closely. "More importantly, is whatever this is something that I'm going to have to factor into whatever we end up doing once we get on the plane tonight? Because I gotta tell you: I am having enough problems building up confidence in the plan we've cooked up without worrying if the only guy I don't have to worry about isn't happy."

Piotr nodded, mindful of how tense the morning meeting had been. In the time since the X-Men had been together, Scott had gotten less and less inhibited about pointing out flaws in Xavier's plans for missions and Xavier always seemed torn between pride in his own selection of a field commander and resentment of the competence that justified that choice. Gatling had brought that silent combat to a head, with both sides willing to use the prison debacle - Xavier's failure to conceptualize, Scott's failure to actualize - to prove their point. "It can wait."

A grunt of acknowledgement from Scott. "I'm sure we'll have plenty of time in Europe to talk," he said with a levity that didn't quite cover up the sourness. Scott was not happy about the X-Men trailing along on Xavier's upcoming book tour, chance to see his brother notwithstanding. Piotr wasn't overly thrilled himself, nor was Bobby, but Scott seemed the most out of sorts.

Piotr understood Scott's unease as well as his own. The book tour meant eight weeks in the spotlight, eight weeks of running gauntlets of protesters, eight weeks of intense media scrutiny, eight weeks of doing nothing but serving as Xavier's backing band - part showgirls and part barnstormers, there to wow the crowds and pack the house for Xavier's proselytizing, an old-time revival with post-modern ideas. Ideas that Piotr found himself increasingly questioning and even disagreeing with; he felt himself a false prophet, a missionary mouthing empty words.

"I'm sure we'll have time," he agreed vaguely. Scott looked at him again, but said nothing and leaned back, shifting over to the other side of the steps to catch the sunshine that had moved on without him.

Piotr watched Scott re-settle. He had been content to serve his penance for his crimes in service to the mutant cause, but something had changed and Piotr was sure that the roiling in his stomach every time the Professor spoke so passionately about one of his more extreme ideas was not indigestion. He wondered if instead it were a sign that his act of contrition was not acceptable because it was not sincere, that he had slipped from actively working for a better world to passively accepting the world as it was and then, perhaps, on to something closer to willful ignorance of the evils he had the power to correct.

  


* * *

Piotr stirred at the sound of a keycard sliding through the lock in the door, then went back to his book. It took Bobby four more tries to get into the room they were sharing, which was quicker than his average. They had been in London for five days and while Bobby had managed to adjust to turning his head the other way to look for cars when crossing the street, the hotel room door lock was proving a more persistent challenge.

"Have fun?" he asked without looking up. He had two more paragraphs before the end of the chapter and he wanted to get them finished before dedicating his attention to Bobby, who would be seeking it.

Bobby was in constant need of attention, to the alternating amusement and irritation of his teammates. Piotr was more amused than irritated most of the time - Bobby was an only child and was used to the constant affections of his doting and occasionally overbearing parents and there was something comforting in feeding a need like that, one born of love and not of anything more sinister or pathological.

The sound of Bobby's deceptively heavy sneakers being kicked off and bouncing off of the bottom of the dresser as they hit the floor and plastic keycard being slapped down on the over-finished wood top echoed around the surprisingly stark room. Piotr had stayed in hotels before, but they had been cheap ones, meant for providing a roof and a bed and not much else and usually offering a per-hour rate. It amused him to know that the "real" hotels were just cleaner versions, not necessarily even more sturdy ones; the towels were not any thicker and there was no sense of even a temporary home among the too-shiny, too plastic-y accoutrements. It was a big step down from the mansion.

"Aaaaugggghh!" Bobby half-wailed as he threw himself backwards onto the foot of Piotr's bed.

The last words of the chapter shook as the mattress shifted and Piotr closed the book, adjusting the bookmark so that it didn't stick out too far before placing the book on the nightstand. "What is the matter?" he asked in Russian. He was peripherally aware that his 'big brother mode' had Russian as its default language, but Bobby had never made an issue out of it - seemed to like it, actually.

Bobby was lying with his arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose, the fingers of his right hand almost touching Piotr's bare toes. "Aaaaugghh," he said again, this time sounding more pathetic and less frustrated.

Piotr tapped his foot against Bobby's hand. "I do not speak 'plaintive wail of teenaged angst'," he said, failing to keep the smile out of his voice. "Your choices are English, Russian, or French if you want to get anything useful in the way of pity out of me."

A loud sigh. "Can you believe our assignment?"

Piotr grimaced, but evened out his features quickly. While he might agree, it didn't do for Bobby to see his displeasure, if for no other reason than it would save the inevitable "Piotr thinks it's stupid, too" from getting back to Xavier. The Professor had been almost hyperaware of their actions since they had touched down at Heathrow on Friday morning, monitoring them constantly with eyes and mind as if he were sure that his pupils would somehow embarrass him if left unsupervised. There had been daily reminders for the team to act like one, especially in public - a united front, although Xavier had put it in less polarizing terms. And both Bobby and Piotr knew that griping about missions that would be rather publicly undertaken was _not_ going to be tolerated with the usual patience.

"I can believe," Piotr replied as he realized Bobby had been waiting for some sort of confirmation that he could safely broach the topic. "It will be interesting, I think. A challenge."

"Interesting," Bobby repeated with obvious disdain, rolling on to his side to face him with the limpness of a corpse. "It'll be a challenge to not break up laughing."

Yesterday morning, over breakfast, the Professor had announced what would be the team's first action since arriving. Split into pairs, with one trio being necessitated by the Sunday afternoon arrival of Logan, tonight they would be set loose upon London after dark and given until dawn to "effect positive change and emphasize post-human themes through constructive actions". The winner would be decided by the Professor at breakfast tomorrow morning.

The reactions had been varied. Scott, who had been edgy at the thought of the team falling out of combat-ready conditioning over the entire eight-week tour, was relieved if not necessarily pleased - it was obviously a "better than nothing" situation for him. Bobby had made his displeasure known, saying something rash about rescuing cats out of trees when they could be chasing the Brotherhood. The outburst had earned them all a lecture from Xavier on how if they could not put their hearts into this philosophy of post-human proactivism, then how could they expect anyone else to do so? Henry, Logan, and Jean had seemed excited by the possibilities and, as they were each one part of the divided units, that buoyancy seemed to carry the day. Ororo had said nothing and Piotr, slightly uneasy at how Xavier's pep talk had so echoed so closely the twins ' description of the X-Men as Xavier's twisted apostles, had kept his reaction to himself.

"If you really find the assignment so unpleasant, then perhaps the Professor was right and you should consider whether or not you really want to do this," Piotr said as he put the book on the nightstand between the beds. In truth, the assignment was not very different than their activities back in New York, made so public by Xavier's article, except that there was an element of quantification - doing good deeds regularly for their own sake versus doing them on a time limit to accrue "points". It felt a little cheap to Piotr, a too-obvious pandering to the masses and, combined with the already circus-like atmosphere of their arrival, like they were the freak show in a traveling carnival.

"You think he was _right_?" Bobby sat up sharply, making the bed shake. He looked betrayed, his voice breaking on the last syllable. "That I should quit?"

"I think he was right about you having to decide whether this is what you want to do with your life," Piotr clarified, returning his thoughts to the immediate present and not missing Bobby's wide-eyed look soften into something closer to surprise and hurt. "You have choices now that you didn' t have before; going home is now one of them. The Sentinels have been decommissioned and you can certainly pass as human."

He neither qualified the 'human' - the team had been conditioned to respond to such word usage by reminding the speaker that mutants were human, too -nor did he add what should have been obvious supporting evidence of safety: that Magneto was dead and the Brotherhood no actively recruited. Because while he was not prepared to tell Bobby the truth, he was similarly unprepared to lie to him.

"But..."

"But what?" Piotr asked, eyebrows raised in silent challenge. Whether it was a challenge to Bobby or to himself, he wasn't sure. But he did know that one reason he had not left the X-Men, no matter how frustrating or embarrassing it became, was that he worried about Bobby, who was simply too young to appreciate what was going on around him and simply too _eager_ to be used if it meant that he would be accepted. "You already know how to control your powers; fine-tuning is a matter of practice. You can go home, go back to high school, find yourself a nice girlfriend, and live a good life until you are older and Commander Fury makes good on his threat to make us all join the Ultimates when we finished with the Professor's school.2 Or maybe you can put this entire life behind you and go on to do whatever you'd like - maybe you can be an astronaut or an accountant. Why do you want to stay here with him if you don't believe in what he is doing?"

Bobby's shoulders slumped, not in defeat but in the realization that Piotr was taking the conversation seriously; Piotr was very glad that it would never have crossed Bobby's mind that he was the only doubter in the room. "Because I do believe... in most of it, anyway." He had been looking down at his socks, but now he looked up and met Piotr's gaze. "I want to make a difference and I want to show everyone that mutants belong here like everyone else."

"Showing everyone means more than saving the President or fighting bad guys," Piotr said gently, but firmly. Bobby was excited by the attention and publicity. The Professor had tried to shelter him from the spotlight earlier on, arguing that he was too young to be subject to that sort of scrutiny, but that had changed over the years and now Iceman was getting his due share of fan mail and threats.

"Showing everyone means doing for others when it's not 'cool' or exciting or even very pleasant. It means putting yourself in a position to be embarrassed or hurt or worse and not making it look like it's a burden. We cannot only do that which will get us a write-up in _Teen People_."

Bobby frowned at him, pursing his lips as if he was about to say that he _knew_ those things already, but he must have seen something in Piotr's expression that made him change his mind and instead he just nodded.

"That's what the Professor said, kinda," he admitted. "But not as nicely."

Piotr chuckled and Bobby frowned more deeply. "You already got a talking-to?"

"I was 'exhorted to consider this time abroad as a positive experience and an opportunity to learn as much about other cultures as others would learn about me'," Bobby quoted in a fair approximation of Xavier's patrician tones, then grinned almost wickedly. "He gave me the 'we're here to clean up Magneto's mess' speech again, which I really didn't need because I think we all have it memorized by now."

Piotr only smiled to indicate his agreement. Scott had grumbled something about Xavier not trusting their toilet-training, since he kept reminding them not to pee on the carpet, but Piotr wasn't going to bring it up -Bobby would pick it up and repeat it over and over until he used it at the wrong time because that is what he did with turns of phrase he found especially appealing.

There was a knock on the door and before Piotr could ask Bobby if he was expecting anyone and to be careful- hotel security had been on full alert and approached the task with diligence if not enthusiasm, but a handful of anti-mutant demonstrators had found them at dinner the other night regardless - he could hear Logan calling both of their names. Bobby let him in and followed behind, flopping on his own bed as Logan sat at the foot of Piotr's and greeted him with a nod and a mumbled 'hey'.

Logan had been fairly subdued since rejoining the team, but Piotr had no idea as to the cause. It wasn't the sight of Jean and Scott together -everyone knew that Logan still carried a torch for Jean, just as they knew that she hadn't forgiven him for misleading them - but that really didn't narrow the field down much.

Unlike the rest of them, Logan made no pretenses of being a student and he came and went as he pleased, disappearing for days, weeks, and occasionally months on end and then returning without either explanation or stories to tell. He seemed to have some sort of agreement with the Professor, however, and the rest of the team took both his absences as well as his presence with a growing equanimity.

"I got a lead on some dealers," Logan began without preamble, wiping invisible dirt off of his jeans. There was no dress code for the book tour beyond 'not exposing any body parts normally unavailable for suntanning in North America', but Piotr idly wondered if Logan would have acceded to a more rigorous standard. "Pushing E and crystal meth on kids younger'n Junior here."

"Hey," Bobby cried out indignantly, then realized that Logan was looking at his Cookie Monster t-shirt. Logan waited until Bobby met his gaze and then winked at him and Bobby smiled. The more irascible the personality, the easier a time Bobby had of making friends - first Logan and then Alex, a feat nobody else on the team save Piotr had managed to any serious degree.

"It's not the kinda Moonie stuff Chuck'll be handin' out prizes for," Logan went on, looking back at Piotr and shrugging, "but it'll do some good and I think we can handle it."

"I'm all for not doing the Moonie thing," Bobby announced. "Even if I don't know what that is. Anything that's not singing 'Kumbaya' on a street corner linked arm-and-arm with those anti-mutant dudes throwing tomatoes outside, I'm in."

"I'm not the one getting a grade on this thing," Logan told Bobby, fighting a chuckle. "So why don't we leave it up to the big fella, huh?"

Piotr looked up, knowing that the spotlight had fallen on him.

Leave it to Logan, so free of conflict with Xavier, to devise the perfect means of defying him without trying to do so. Logan was not looking to cause conflict with the Professor by intentionally not following the spirit (although embracing the letter) of the assignment; a straightforward policing was simply what he did best. Logan did not make speeches and he did not put himself up as any sort of example to follow; he knew that he wasn't capable of the former and couldn't deceive anyone on the latter. It made Piotr a little uncomfortable with his own hypocrisy, playing the good soldier by hiding his bloody past behind him. Especially because Logan, a man bred to violence, was so much more of a believer in Xavier's program than Piotr himself was turning out to be.

"It won't be anything too crazy," Logan said when Piotr didn't answer immediately. "Don't plan on screwing up Charlie's gig by creatin' an international incident. And if it does get hairy, we'll pull back. No point in getting hurt doin' someone else's job."

Piotr's instincts told him that no matter how essentially Logan the plan was, Xavier would know that this would have proceeded only with his approval and that Logan would not have embarked on this course of action if Piotr had refused. And perhaps the Professor would see it as a passive-aggressive reaction to finding out about Magneto, which in turn would raise the level of scrutiny just when Piotr didn't want his wavering faith exposed. Logan would think no less of him for saying no; the two of them had had enough half-conversations in the pre-dawn hours after returning from their patrols that Piotr knew where he stood with the older man.

"So what are we doing tonight, Brain?" Bobby asked, hope shining bright in his eyes.

All of his instincts said that he should go on playing the good soldier, flying under the radar until he had sorted out his feelings about what he had gotten involved with. Piotr looked past Logan's shoulder, as if the blank television screen would produce an answer. Next to the television was the CD Piotr had left out so that he would remember to give it to Alex tomorrow and he could almost hear Alex's derisive laughter that would come when Scott would explain their presence in all of tomorrow's tabloid headlines. He could certainly hear Alex asking that if his brainwashed brother didn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain, what was Piotr 's excuse.

"Same thing we do every night, Pinky," Piotr told Bobby with a straight face. "Try to take over the world."

  


* * *

"...get a goalie. If they do, they'll be unbeatable. Who's gonna stop them? Detroit?"

Scott couldn't hear Piotr's answer, but Alex's voice carried clearly as he walked toward the bench where they had been sitting ever since picking up lunch at some hole-in-the-wall Indian joint. Alex apparently didn't think much about Switzerland's ability to produce goaltenders.

It was a beautiful afternoon, the fourth in a row, and Scott was beginning to wonder about London's reputation for rain. But Ororo was extremely testy if you even looked like you were about to ask her if the sunshine was her doing - a question that every single reporter covering the book tour seemed required to pose - and so Scott had just taken the balmy weather as a good omen. Persistent rain might have kept the number of hecklers down, though.

"But they never do anything! It's like St. Louis - all shiny in the regular season and whoops, there goes the playoffs again. Except they lose to Toronto every year and where's the self-respect in that?"

Alex and Piotr seemed content to argue hockey by themselves, so he took the opportunity to look around the park. Kensington Palace was on the other end; Scott had some vague notion that Princess Diana might have lived there, but he wasn't sure and didn't care enough to have asked Alex. As with Central Park back in New York, the gardens were surrounded by city life, but inside the gates there were trees and flowers and pretty children chasing balls and birds and in the sunshine nobody looked twice at the casually dressed young man in sunglasses. It was a feeling of both bliss and despair - there was no reason he should have to feel so good about not being the focus of attention and, invariably, hate.

They had been in London for almost a week and he'd had barely a minute to himself. Press conferences, interviews with print and electronic media, appearances at everything from bookstores to schools to a pub down in Chelsea where he'd had to put Piotr on Bobby Patrol because the team's youngest member seemed disinclined to turn down the offers by well-wishers of amber liquids in pint glasses.

And that was just the public side of things. Away from the spotlight - an increasingly difficult place to find - Scott was equally busy as well. He was conferring with the Professor about the team's activities both public and not-so-public, trying to play mediator between an anxious Xavier worried about a public relations mishap and a cabin-feverish team dying to cut loose away from the ever-present eyes (Xavier's desire to control every aspect of their public face had Scott wondering when he'd finally lose his patience and tell the Professor to just make life easy and control them all telepathically; otherwise they butted heads about Scott's wish to get some training time in and Xavier's desire to downplay the paramilitary aspects of the X-Men), and then, when he wasn't trying to keep everyone from killing each other in public, there was Jean.

It wasn't as if Jean were especially high-maintenance. She wasn't, at least in the traditional sense and, with her telepathy, she was usually pretty good about knowing when to move in and when to step back. Except this week, when she had developed an uncanny habit of turning up just when Scott had managed to fend off all of his other obligations. There was a neediness in her pursuit of him, he had realized, and he had been giving in to her demands rather than try to fight her off as well. Not that there was much self-sacrifice in that; Jean's neediness was almost purely physical in its manifestation and he really wasn't that much of a boy scout to deny her advances, despite the nagging voice in the back of his mind (that did _not_ sound like Xavier) telling him that he shouldn't be getting his rocks off while on what qualified as an eight-week mission.

That sense of disquiet did not extend to Logan, at least not most of the time. Somewhere along the line, Scott had realized that there was very little he could do about the whole situation. He couldn't tell Logan to stop wanting Jean (although he could, and did, tell Logan to stop trying to _get_ Jean) and he couldn't not let Jean know how he felt about her. They had a psi-link, something that Scott felt spoke volumes about the stability of their relationship, and Jean couldn't help but know. Also, and more practically because he was pragmatic even here, if one day, heaven forbid, Jean decided that she wanted to go back to Logan, there would be nothing he could do about it. There would be nothing he could say that would change her mind because she could already see what was going on in his head. Freed from trying to control their relationship, Scott had found himself free from worrying about it. His occasionally immature reactions to Logan's attempts to put a third wheel on the bicycle were something else entirely.

Scott was wearing regularly-shaped sunglasses and the light coming in the sides where the visor usually wrapped around still surprised him; the changes in his peripheral vision made him uneasy for reasons he couldn't express, not even to Jean through their link, and he turned around so that the sun would be behind him.

He hadn't walked so far that he couldn't see Alex and Piotr slouched on the bench where he had left them, Alex gesturing animatedly and Piotr with a pose that carried his usual patient bemusement. It was hard to put that gentle personality with what little he knew of Piotr's life prior to the X-Men. Scott knew that Piotr had committed some awesomely brutal acts, he had seen Boris and knew from his own experiences what men like that expected of their employees, but Piotr was such a _moral_ man that it seemed impossible that he'd either have let himself be put in such a position or, having found himself in such, wouldn't have come up with a way to get out of it. But Piotr wasn't one to volunteer that sort of information and Scott, having made a point of keeping his own background shrouded in secrecy, wasn't in a position to press. However, he was in a position to wonder whether anyone else on the team, including the Professor, knew how much Piotr was hiding from them. Piotr was annoyingly content to let people assume that he was around only for his size, especially since they had returned from Weapon X, and the truth couldn't be any further from that. Scott was sure that Piotr was the wisest of all of them - Henry might have the book-smarts, but Piotr had everything else. It's what made his burgeoning friendship with Alex both natural and slightly disturbing. The two of them put together could probably take over the world.

Alex looked good, much happier than he had seemed when they had last seen each other over the summer. He was making the most of his second chance and Scott was both proud and relieved - it was certainly not beyond Alex to be spiteful enough to screw this up, too, just because. But he hadn't, far from it. For the first time since Scott had met him, Alex looked comfortable in his skin - and for more reasons than that he had taken out his eyebrow piercing (the nose ring, unfortunately, was still there and Alex now had two tattoos).

It seemed that the shock of discovering his mutation had largely worn off and if Alex was having any problems with maintaining his cover story (Xavier had had to produce a false birth certificate as well as doctored academic transcripts; Alex's identification had him as two years older than he was), he hadn't said anything to him. Of course, that didn't mean anything because Alex still didn't tell him a lot of things. But apparently he hadn't said anything to Piotr, either, and Scott trusted Piotr to report if Alex did.

Scott was more wistful than jealous. Piotr and Alex could talk politics and sports while he and Alex were still trying to find common ground beyond their DNA and their mutations. But they were emailing regularly and speaking on the phone often enough and there hadn't been any long silences since they had gotten pissed at each other arguing over the Florida recount. And that was a far cry from the first few months Alex had been at Oxford where there had been long silences and Scott had had to initiate everything.

Alex had been extremely resentful back then, perfectly happy to blame Scott for having turned his life upside down, as if Scott had caused his mutation to manifest when and how it did. The Professor had done his best to try to explain away Alex's rage but Scott hadn't been appeased. There was so very little with which he could help his brother - Alex was so much smarter than he was, had so much more potential than he did, and Scott would never be able to do as much for him as he could have right then, when Alex was so scared and confused. But Alex had kept him at a distance, pushing him further away the harder Scott tried to close in. And there had been precious little sympathy within the house for his situation - neither Jean nor Ororo could understand why he was "wasting his time" trying to communicate with Alex, whom both of them regarded as akin to Hitler.

But then Weapon X had happened and things had changed. The very real possibility that Alex had lost his brother a second time, this time for good, had thawed the relationship. Alex hadn't hidden his relief when Scott had called him upon returning to New York and Scott had taken full advantage of that to the point that he had traveled to Ireland during one of Alex's intersessions (Alex having decided to go to school all year round) and the two of them had spent five days driving around and trying to get to know each other. It had been a mixed success, but that was better than a failure or maintaining the status quo.

That had been four months ago and Alex had changed even further since then. He was eighteen now and Scott could see in him the shape of the man he was becoming. Alex was already taller than he was and probably would be broader as well if he maintained to sort of physical regimen Scott did. The tightly wound tension that he had seen in Ireland was gone, although that could have been because it wasn't just the two of them here. Alex looked like a university student now, complete with reading glasses (apparently Scott's sharp distance vision was at least partly irrespective of his mutation; Alex was farsighted). He was interested in geology, of all things, and Scott knew better than to ask why that instead of the political science Alex had already mastered. They really didn't talk much about schooling and Scott knew why; he was envious of his brother and Alex was too perceptive not to realize it.

In Ireland, they had fought over whether Scott should try to take classes at one of the many colleges and universities in Westchester. Technically, Scott was still in high school - he had never received any sort of acknowledgement of graduation from the Professor and had not taken the GED exam. Alex had been furious with him for his seeming lack of interest in pursuing either one; he had declared it ridiculous that the Professor should not want his team leader to be as educated as possible. They had gotten sidetracked after that, although Scott had managed to convey that he himself didn't feel like the Professor was holding him back. Alex had taken the news that Scott didn't consider himself college material no better and it had been a long car trip to the next castle that afternoon. For all of his refusal to have anything to do with the X-Men, Alex had plenty of opinions about the Professor and his ideas and methods, despite the fact that Xavier was still paying for the portion of Alex's tuition that wasn't covered by grants or loans.

The truth of it was, at least in Scott's mind, that college really served no purpose for him right now. He was never going to be able to make a civilian life for himself - if pressed, he'd admit to seeing himself in the Ultimates a few years from now - and that made getting a degree less of a priority. He needed command experience, he needed field training, and he needed to acquire the skills that could turn his mutation into an effective tool. ("You're more than just a walking weapon," Alex had yelled at him. "You don't even have any fucking hobbies!") If he was lucky, he and Jean could eventually set themselves up a life together and for that he'd probably need to brush up on his social skills, but Jean seemed inclined to work around that and he was more than inclined to let her. Higher education, at least in subject areas that had no practical use seemed if not frivolous, then at least a little luxurious at a moment in time when Scott couldn't afford to be sidetracked.

"You're doing a lame job of making a break for it."

Scott turned around to find Alex watching him, a sardonic smile on his face. "I wasn't trying to ditch you two," he replied. "I was just... thinking."

"Uh-huh."

The smirk was still on Alex's face and Scott frowned at it, turning to look at a large flower that was growing on a vine that ran along a metal trellis next to them. "It's been crazy all week. I just needed a minute of quiet."

"Dog and pony show is running 24/7?" Alex asked, not making it sound like a question.

Scott nodded and braced himself for another of his brother's harangues on the Professor's ideas and methods, but nothing followed, so he found himself looking closely at the flower. It was horn-shaped, like where sound came out of an old gramophone, with scalloped tips and surrounded by big leaves.

"It's a pretty bilious pink," Alex said quietly and Scott looked up, then realized that his brother was talking about the flower he had been looking at. "Like sunburned Pepto-Bismol."

"It's got a nice shape," Scott replied. He had known the flower was pink, but the brightness of the sun made it hard to tell the shade. "Where's Piotr?"

"He went to find a trash can to dump our stuff and then to find a water fountain," Alex replied, looking around. "I told him I'd keep you from wandering off and he could come get us."

Scott nodded again and looked at his watch. They had a few hours before he and Piotr had to return to the hotel to get ready for the evening's assignment. He took off his sunglasses with one hand, squeezing his eyes closed tight, and rubbed at his face with the other. The sunglasses were pleasantly light, especially compared to the visor, but the constant pressure on the bridge of his nose assured that he could still feel them. The skin at the two points of contact was much smoother than it was on the rest of his face and much more sensitive and he pressed until he could feel the veins throbbing beneath the pads of his fingertips.

"You're not gonna last another seven weeks, are you?"

Scott sighed and shrugged. "I don't really have a choice. The alternative is to tell the Professor that I'm tired, cranky, and really want to go home and I'll catch up with him later. And I can't do that because how is he supposed to get any support from the public when his own people aren't there for him."

"Yeah, but..." Alex sounded like he was winding up and Scott shook his head to head him off.

"It's just a matter of getting acclimated," he assured, wondering whom exactly he was trying to convince. "We have to figure out how we're going to operate, how we're going to handle the protesters and the media and all of the attention and the security folks are going to start figuring out how to handle all that, too."

That was a gross oversimplification. The security detail in London, made up of plainclothes agents as well as soldiers, was ill prepared for the crush of competing protest groups and the sheer number of spectators. There had been breaches at the hotel and at two of the venues in the first three days and Scott had taken one of the important-looking people aside and warned that if it became necessary, the team would defend itself and the Professor and they could not be responsible for whatever damage that might cause.

Xavier had not been happy with Scott's proactive measures, but there had been only two more incidents since then, both minor, and Scott would rather bear the Professor's displeasure than face the alternative. The team was on edge enough as it was, both from without - no matter how bad things might have seemed in their individual backgrounds, none of them had been prepared for the waves of sheer loathing that were crashing down upon them - and from within. Xavier's pressure for perfect behavior, Logan's amazing ability to casually disrupt everyone's routine without trying, and being constantly in each other's presence was adding to the strain.

Alex made a disgusted noise. "And how many death threats are you getting a day?"

"A dozen or so," Scott replied with a shrug of indifference and smiled. "Those are actually the simplest to deal with. Hand the letter over to the police and let them worry about it."

"It's everything else, really," he went on after a moment's pause. "The insults, the signs, the crap they throw at you, the stuff they say... We're here to take that crap so that nobody else has to, I know that, but... It's _hard_. Because you can't tune it out. It's one voice louder than anyone else, one sign that draws your eye when you scan the crowd... and it's always the loudest voice saying the worst things, the brightest sign that's got the cruelest slogan..."

"It's intentional, bro," Alex retorted and Scott remembered that Alex used to be on the other side, organizing just these sorts of protests. That seemed like a lifetime ago. "Placement is more important than manpower -quality over quantity. You put the guy with the megaphone off to the side, not in the thick of the crowd where he'll have to shout over people. You put the guys with the smoke bombs and the paint-filled balloons in the middle of the group so nobody'll see them throwing anything."

Scott looked at him blandly. Alex obviously wasn't proud of that phase of his life, but he didn't shy away from making reference to it when it was appropriate. But only when it was on his terms. The Professor had once suggested that Alex use his experience with the Friends of Humanity to spearhead a pro-mutant movement at Oxford or its environs and Alex had just stared at him with a look so glacial that Bobby would have been envious and quietly said that he didn't think that that would be a good idea.

A woman pushing a carriage - a "pram", Scott mentally corrected himself -passed by them, the baby inside crying fitfully.

"Do you have someone planted in the crowd?" Alex asked thoughtfully after they passed. "Someone who looks like they fit in?"

Scott shook his head. "I don't know. I'm not supposed to get too involved in that stuff. I'm the principal this time, not the protector. That, and they won't tell me anything and the Professor won't make them."

Alex snorted derisively. "Figures."

"Jean scans the crowd, I know that," Scott offered, then frowned when Alex' s scowl deepened.

"She doesn't know what to look for," Alex said dismissively. He ran his fingers through his spiky hair. "I'm not even sure you do."

"So tell me."

Alex looked at him as if he doubted Scott was taking him seriously, but whatever he saw satisfied him and he nodded quickly. "Protests like this always fall into patterns. The first step is to send someone out to watch and listen and find out what it's going to be. There are competing groups within each side, the antis and the pros, and sometimes they're more interested in defeating their competition within their own side than they are with anything else. And sometimes they're not and they're focused on the other side. And sometimes they're just focused on the object of the protest and don't care who else is there, but that's pretty rare."

Alex wasn't looking directly at him, Scott realized, more over his shoulder and down the pathway toward one of the special gardens.

"When I was running things for the FoH," Alex went on, "I always had to make sure to keep my people from getting distracted, keep them on mission, so to speak. If there were need for a rumble with the Human Supremacy League or one of the other groups, I'd send out a separate goon squad, the idiots who weren't good for anything but cracking heads and making a mess, so my people could concentrate on doing what they were supposed to be doing."

Scott felt a shiver of something cold and knew it had less to do with the calm way Alex was explaining how to best manipulate hate and violence and more to do with the way these elements _could_ be handled. It was so much more comforting to believe that such darkness was spontaneous and unplanned, developing at random like a mini Big Bang of malevolence, and not cultivated and birthed according to a plan.

"You have to remember that most of the ones out doing foot-soldiering at protests aren't high up in the food chain within whatever organization they 're in," Alex continued. He had one hand pulling on the back of his neck and the other at his side, hanging loosely but for the thumb looped into the corner of his jeans pocket. It was an oddly casual pose considering what he was saying. "They're either prone to violence or they're just not too bright or they're zealots. Zealots are the worst because you can dumb down instructions enough for the stupid ones and find constructive tasks for the thugs, but you can't effectively plan around zealots because they get distracted easily and start foaming at the mouth and then they're good for nothing but being a warm body to throw to the right lion. Cannon fodder."

Piotr appeared at the corner of Scott's peripheral vision and he turned toward him. Piotr waved.

"What you have to look for," Alex said once Scott had turned back to him, "are the ones in charge. Cannon fodder is cannon fodder and the local law enforcement can handle the hooligans and the martyrs. You want to keep an eye on whoever is issuing orders or whoever has the authority to change orders; they are the ones planning on everyone getting distracted by the fighting and the cursing and the singing because that's when they're going to make their move. They won't be alone; they'll have their strike force with them, usually a half-dozen people capable of independent thought and action in case something unexpected goes wrong."

"You're assuming that there's a plan to do something," Scott objected. "Isn 't just disturbing the peace ever the end goal?"

"The X-Men showing up in London is an event," Alex replied with a shrug, accepting a bottle of water from Piotr. Scott took one as well. "Things happen at events because they are, ipso facto, high profile. If you guys were here all the time then, yeah, the odds of something going down would be less. But this is a huge opportunity - the FoH and their brethren aren't here to make sure you know that they hate you. They're here to make a statement to everyone else and you're supposed to be the object lesson."

"What would you do if you were still with them?" Scott asked. He was half in Cyclops mode already, trying to map what Alex was telling him over his memories of the past week, hoping to see it all with a new perspective so that he could be better prepared for the next time.

"Make you defeat yourselves," Alex answered quickly. He opened up his water bottle and took a long draught. "The anti-mutant movement is predicated on the fact that mutants aren't human, that they're not people. They'll want to show that you're really animals after all. Couple that with the totally justified fear of a quasi-vigilante mutant paramilitary force, which is what the X-Men are, and they'll want to show that not only are you animals, but that you're violent animals who could go off at any time and are thus a danger to everyone."

It did not escape Scott's notice that Alex used "they" when referring to mutants, not "we". Whether that was because he was thinking like he was back in the FoH or whether it was a sign of something deeper, Scott didn't know. He didn't remember noticing it before, but how often had he and Alex discussed the mutant question?

"They'll make it look like we attacked first?" Piotr asked.

Alex shook his head. "It almost doesn't matter about who fires first. Half of the pro-mutant crowd out there is pro-mutant on principle, not as the result of any practice. They've never met a mutant, at least an out one. Saying that all mutants should be treated the same as everyone else and then _seeing_ mutants in action... You all have some pretty scary powers. The minute any of them get used in front of witnesses, you're gonna lose support, even if it's self-defense."

"So we're fucked either way," Scott grumbled. He gestured for the three to begin walking toward the exit to the park. They had a few hours left before he and Piotr had to report back to the hotel and this would be their only chance to do any sort of touristing without a police escort or a press entourage.

"No, you're just going to have to focus more resources on making sure it doesn't get to that point," Alex replied, taking another sip from his water bottle. "Which probably means that your oh-so-subtle nighttime adventures should be curtailed. The tabloids are everywhere and you've been here long enough that they've got you in their sights. It's all peachy that Xavier wants you to make headlines in the newspapers, but if the _Sun_ or the _Mirror_ catch Jean levitating a Cooper Mini over a cowering car thief, it 's lights out. We know she'd be doing it just to scare the guy, but that's not how it's going to play in the papers."

Scott sighed and exchanged a glance with Piotr. The nighttime assignments were unpopular with the team - especially as he and Henry had won both of the two already completed - and he really didn't need another reason to feel uneasy about them. But Alex, who had had _plenty_ to say after the first one, had provided one anyway.

Scott watched Piotr dig for what he assumed would be the ever-present roll of Mentos out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket. But instead of the candy, his large hand withdrew a slim CD jewel case.

"Oh," Piotr said, sounding vaguely surprised. "I had forgotten that I had brought this. Here." He handed it to Alex.

"Dude!" Alex cried out happily as he looked at the CD's label. "You were holding out on me! You absolute _bastard_!"

"I was not holding out on you," Piotr replied primly as he dug his Mentos out of the pocket on the other side of the jacket. "I didn't find it until right before we were leaving for London and I never bothered to email you and tell you that I had found it."

"What is it?" Scott asked, gesturing with his chin at the CD Alex was clutching like a precious gem.

"Hephaestus's Anvil," Alex answered. "I've only been looking for a bootleg for forever. They haven't come to Britain since I've been here."

"And they are...?"

"Trance-industrial," Alex replied, "They sample classical music in with their beats, which would totally rock on their own, but..."

Scott's curiosity dimmed somewhat. He and Alex had found out in Ireland that they really didn't share much in the way of musical tastes, except for classic rock. "Like Enigma?"

"Oh, so much, much cooler than Enigma," Alex fairly cooed. "I might just ditch you both so I can go home and listen to this."

"If I had known that that would be all it would take to get rid of you," Piotr began wryly and Alex made a face back at him.

"Thanks," he said, putting the case into his backpack. "My neighbors may hate you, but they need to get out more anyway and maybe this will be the impetus they need."

Threats to the X-Men forgotten, for the moment, the trio exited the park and made their way to St. Paul's chapel.

  


* * *

(Every other morning, it has been the traditional English breakfast. Eggs, bacon, sausages, fried bread, tomatoes, mushrooms and baked beans all washed down with a cup of coffee. Mutant metabolism and his body size allow for the indulgence. This morning it is eggs and a scone with marmalade and the coffee is already making his stomach upset.)

"Well, class. That's your forty-eight hour deadline expired. Should we take a look at the morning papers and see how your exploits were reported in the national press?"

(The clothes were not washed. They were bundled into plastic bags and given to Logan, who took them to the incinerator in the hotel's basement. They did not speak, not even Bobby, who seemed to be taking the events much better than he was.)

"Storm and I took down a terrorist cell based in Tottenham Court Road, Professor Xavier: Britain's biggest-selling paper, pages one, two and three."

"Me and the guys busted an international drug ring stretching from Miami to Romania, Professor: Britain's second-biggest paper, pages three, four, and five."

"Cyclops and I made short work of an ugly gang of muggers, sir. It never actually made the papers, but I did manage the _Times_ crossword puzzle in something close to record time."

(Henry is falsely nonchalant. He cares about finishing first in the assignment, cares far more than any of them do. There is a neediness to him that lurks shallowly below the almost arrogant surface. Being with 'Ro has not fed that need and, in the end, Piotr is sure that that will be the cause of the relationship's demise.)

"Is that it? Are you really going up against us with a story about how you beat up some muggers? Boys, you might have been sitting pretty at the top of the class three times in a row, but something tells me my associate and I have just stolen your bright and sparkly crown."

(The message had been waiting for him when he had come down for breakfast. A pretty card with a pre-Raphaelite painting on the front and a dangerous note inside: "If you think Doubting Thomas fared better than Judas Iscariot, you've only read one version of the story. The big clock at the witching hour shall bring another." Unnecessarily vague, he thought. But he had not decided whether he'd be at Big Ben at midnight.)

"Not necessarily, Storm. Ordinarily, yes, your position in the morning paper is an excellent indication of your actual grade, but I'm afraid that today boasts exceptional circumstances. Scott Summers and Henry McCoy come first yet again, my friends. The rest of you will have your papers returned telepathically."

(They had all read the papers before eating; nobody should have been surprised. The shocked cries of indignation should have ceased after the first assignment, when it became obvious that they had the choice to either play by the Professor's rules or lose.)

"What? Not that I actually care about the grade or anything, but since when does kicking a few punks around beat busting a multi-million dollar heroin operation?"

"Since you maimed, killed or disfigured over twenty human beings in a blaze of adamantium fury, Wolverine. The exercise was to go out there and save lives, not act like Charles Bronson's Canadian Cousin."

"So what did Henry and Scott do that was so amazing? Spend two days teaching those muggers the error of their ways and find them all sweet little jobs?"

(Ororo is being stubborn in defeat, but Piotr doesn't mind. It allows him to see sparks of the old 'Ro, the spunky car thief who'd rather hijack V-8 engines than learn fractions, the one who had no problems asking aloud what sort of a nuthouse they had all walked into.)

"Well, except for the two guys we checked into rehab, of course, but the Professor's contacts in the intelligence services promised them a post the minute they get out."

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me. Tell me this isn't what the new term's all about, Professor, because I didn't drop out of regular school to become a freaking social worker, man."

(Bobby is too young to understand that the Professor is not out to save the world, that their assignments have not been about heroics but instead about public relations. And Piotr feels remiss for not explaining to him that they are propaganda here, not protectors, even as it always felt like to do so would be too cynical, too much like telling a child that there is no Father Christmas.)

"And I didn't form this school to train an army of thugs, Iceman. How can I tour the world asking for change when my students are clinging to the politics of the ape-man? I don't like prisons, I don't like capital punishment, and I don't like mutants dropping car-size hailstones on unsuspecting Irishmen..." 

(A jumble of images. Xavier giving his eight millionth iteration of how they were supposed to behave so that he could best further the mutant cause. Pietro and Wanda pitying him for not understanding. Alex talking about floating cars over thieves. Erik Lehnsherr sitting on a park bench and not sounding at all like a lobotomized megalomaniacal killer. Scott looking pained when he asked him about Machiavelli.)

"Those Irishmen were planning to blow up a shopping mall in central London, Professor."

"And they also happened to be members of a species we're trying very hard to ingratiate ourselves with, Storm."

"Gaining the trust of Homo Sapiens is integral to our agenda, my X-Men. Phase Three was designed to promote pacifist alternatives to traditional human problems."

(Xavier is watching him. He is chastising all of them, but focusing on him. And part of him feels like an apostate being called before the altar and part of him feels like he is struggling to climb out of Plato's cave. He is here to repent for the life of cruelty and violence that he regrets in his heart and yet nonetheless keeps returning to, like an addict to his drug. But his violence is not wanton, it is not out of his control by anyone's scale except the Professor's. Is it possible that his recreancy is relative and not absolute, his sense of guilt a benefit for someone other than him? Did he think of Magneto just now on his own, or was it a telepathic warning that yes, Xavier can find nonviolent solutions to violent problems?)

"Don't give them any new excuses to hate us yet."3

  


* * *

The ride back to the hotel was in silence.

Scott watched Jean play absently with his left hand; he was aware of her probing questioningly along their telepathic link, but he ignored the gentle feelers, firming his shields as much as he could although he could sense her psionic energy sliding around them like a rising tide past a single sandbag. He wasn't trying to keep her out because he was angry with her; he wasn't. Rather it was that he wanted the silence, wanted to be alone in his head even - or perhaps especially - as he could not be so otherwise.

The Professor was curiously quiet. Usually after a public appearance he was chatty - almost hyper - with enthusiasm over the potential good they had done.

But there was no silver lining to be found with this dark cloud.

Protected by his glasses, Scott looked around at his teammates. Bobby's posture screamed of dejection; Piotr, who would have been trying to gently prop Bobby up in normal circumstances, had a distant look in his eyes and a firm set to his jaw - his mind obviously elsewhere; Ororo had her eyes closed and was half-leaning her head against Henry's shoulder; Henry was looking out the tinted window with the sort of determination that went with looking for something; Logan and the Professor couldn't be seen unless Scott leaned forward and he didn't want to do that.

The lecture had not been so bad; Xavier had spoken elegantly and briefly, the questions had been rather par for the course. The audience had been mostly sympathetic - even more so than usual, Scott thought. Usually they had a good thirty percent of the crowd who was hostile. But this time it had seemed less and while they had been grateful for the relative calm of the scheduled event, that calm had been thoroughly shattered by the unscheduled ones.

"We should all remember that we have made progress," the Professor said quietly but firmly, only sounding a little like a man who had to convince himself as much as the rest of them. "Not only tonight, but this week. We shall continue to make progress and we shall not let the stubborn few dim our ambitions to find commonality with the many."

The protest outside before the talk had been expected, just not on such a scale. The usual pre-event crowd ranged from about a hundred to maybe three hundred, depending on the time of day and the weather and the venue. Scott had been starting to recognize faces, but whether they were Alex's strike forces or his rabid zealots, he couldn't tell. Tonight, there had been five hundred easily. Maybe more - it had been hard to see in the quick press from limousine to walkway to entrance to auditorium. There had been thrown bottles, some empty, some full of alcohol, some full of piss. There had been eggs and a couple of rocks, all of which, like the bottles, bounced off of Jean's telekinetic shield. But Jean's shield could do nothing to either mask the horrible things being shouted at them from all sides or keep them from seeing the carefully created signs.

"Didn't feel like it tonight," Bobby said sullenly.

The worst part was that there were so many children present among the protesters, mouths curled in disgust as they shouted very adult things. Adults were expected, but it _hurt_ to see the children. They were supposed to be the future, the moldable ones who could still be influenced positively, the ones who were supposed to be the demographic the X-Men were supposed to be able to reach. They weren't supposed to be holding up posters with pictures of fetuses with captions about how if they had been a mutant, they would have hoped their mommies had aborted them. They weren't supposed to be hurling eggs and insults and sounding like if they were the future, the future involved genetic cleansing.

"Not every victory will be easy or immediate," Xavier replied more confidently than before, sounding as if he had found his resolve. "Have faith, young Master Drake. Would we really want the world if we didn't have to conquer it first?"

Scott didn't miss Piotr turning his head sharply toward Xavier, but if the Professor noticed, he didn't react. And, a moment later, Piotr was looking down, stretching his neck by turning his head this way and that. Perhaps it had been nothing but a twinge.

"Overstayed our welcome," Logan muttered.

"Why would you say that?" Jean asked bitterly and Scott squeezed the hand she had been playing with to hopefully signal to her that this was not the time or the place. "We're not houseguests. It's our planet, too. That's what we're here to prove!"

Jean usually did not treat Logan well, a fact that only occasionally bothered Scott. She was often terse and cold to him, but there was just enough flirtation in her interactions with him that Logan noticed - and so did he. To what purpose she this flirtation aimed, he didn't know - to tempt Logan into thinking he still had a chance, to prove to him that he didn't, to keep Scott from getting complacent or some other reason that only telepaths or women understood.

"London's not our town," Logan replied, looking up at Jean. If he had been ruffled by her tone of voice, it didn't show. "And we've been marchin' up and down the streets for more than a week demandin' that everyone stop and look at us and pay attention. Damned straight we're houseguests. Rude ones, too. Makin' everyone listen to what Chuck's gotta say, askin' for people to change the way they think and act. Even the nicest folks can only take so much of that."

"Since when are you the expert on the human condition?" Ororo asked, cutting off what surely would have been Jean's angry rejoinder. Scott tried to tug on their telepathic link, tried to draw her attention away from Logan and on to him. They didn't need to be fighting now, they couldn't lose cohesion just because things were going badly. Jean ignored him. "All you're good at is ending it. You think you know better than the Prof..."

"Enough."

Scott wasn't sure if Xavier had said it aloud or all in their heads telepathically, but the effect was the same: total silence except for the thin noise trickling in from the outside.

"I will not have this ugliness belching forth," the Professor continued sternly, leaning forward to make eye contact with all of them as best he could. "We are a team and a family and it speaks poorly both of us as a group and of me as the paterfamilias that at our first obstacle, we turn on each other."

A meaningful pause and another sweep of the audience with what could be a very unsettling glare. If Scott had learned nothing else since they had been in London, it was that the Professor was a brilliant public speaker and could hold an audience in thrall without any reliance on his telepathy.

"Logan is not incorrect," he went on, letting the admission sink in. "Although perhaps I might prefer to agree to a less strong variation on his theme. We have indeed been very demanding guests of the city of London in particular and Great Britain as a whole and even, yes, the world at large. But Jean is also correct - we are here to change that perception. And just because we are sure in our righteousness does not mean that we can begrudge _homo sapiens_ their slowness to adapt. We are asking them to change their worldview, to give up beliefs that they had never even thought to question. They have every right to be angry."

"Galileo died without having convinced the world," Henry said quietly, almost primly.

Bobby looked over at him, a mixture of annoyance and confusion on his face. "And that's going to help us how?"

"Bobby," Piotr said sharply and Bobby threw himself back against his seat.

"I have perhaps, in my eagerness, stretched us all beyond the breaking point," the Professor said as the limousine slowed to a stop. Scott could see the particular gas lamps that stood outside of their hotel. "We have no commitments tomorrow. I think it would be best if we delayed our arrival in Paris by a few hours and spent the day... at rest. We shall meet for breakfast promptly at nine, but this evening and the rest of the day tomorrow shall be your own to do as you would."

With that, Logan opened the door he was closest to, startling the driver who had come around to open it. They all exited, Jean using her telekinesis to help the Professor out and into his chair. Scott hovered, just in case, but it proved unnecessary. As he watched Jean settle the Professor's blanket over his lap with her hands, he could hear Ororo and Henry murmuring, presumably making plans. Logan had already walked off and Piotr was waiting with Bobby.

There were the usual stares, whispers, and surreptitious glances as they crossed the lobby. They were all still in uniform and there was no mistaking who and what they were. The elevator was empty and Scott was thankful - three times he had seen someone exit when they had not intended to rather than share an elevator with him.

Their rooms were in different parts of the hotel - the publisher, unaware that the X-Men would be joining him, had booked only for the Professor for London and Xavier had had to make subsequent arrangements for the team. As such, his was a suite in the penthouse and required a separate elevator, so bid them a warm goodnight and an equally warm exhortation to be careful and headed off. The girls' room and Bobby and Piotr's room were on the fourth, but neither Jean nor Ororo made any move to depart, so only Bobby and Piotr exited, the former with a muffled farewell and Piotr with something as brief and unmemorable.

"So, who's swapping rooms?" Ororo asked once the doors had closed. "Jean and I don't care."

Henry looked amused and Scott could feel Jean's satisfaction with the plan, but he knew that he did not look pleased. It had been the Professor's decision to not room the two couples together; he had never said anything to the group, but to Scott he had expressed concern about public perception - it was bad enough that they were mutants, but that they were also mutants with questionably loose morals was something else. The Professor had put it in more flowery speech, of course, but Scott had gotten the gist of it and explained it to Henry and Jean as such. That had been Scott's justification for not agreeing to Jean's plans to swap rooms with Henry on the first night; his giving in to Jean's demands for clandestine couplings and rushing off to dark, unseen places had been his compromise.

"Oh, come _on_, Scott," Jean sighed. "It's our last night and the Professor all but said that he didn't care what we did. Did you not get that part about 'the rest of the evening is our own'?"

"But..." He sighed as the elevator dinged to announce that it had arrived at the floor where he and Henry had their room.

"Our reputation is pretty much the last thing we have to worry about," Ororo said sourly. "If we got caught, it'd just be one more reason for people to hate us. _I_ think the Professor is wrong about that anyway. I think they'd really like to know that we are just like everyone else."

The moment the elevator doors opened, Scott fled the three expectant faces watching him. Henry caught up to him first as he strode toward their room.

"Scott, it's just one night," he said easily as they arrived at their room door. "And it's going to be a long seven weeks to work on our abstinence skills. But it's been a very long week and we do have the night off... Besides, not all of us are dating telepaths. Some of us have to resort to more conventional means."

Scott was about to say something about how nothing he and Jean had done required telepathy, but Henry looked at him knowingly before he got a word out and Scott accepted that he'd never win this argument. So he leaned forward and let his forehead hit the door with a dull thud and the click of the top of his visor hitting wood.

"The girls have the room near the elevator, so I should perhaps go there," Henry went on, pleased in victory. "It will be much less of a gauntlet to run than this long hallway."

Scott pulled out his keycard and opened the door and Henry followed him in, already starting to pull off the straps and ties that crossed over his uniform shirt. Scott undid his neatly, as much to allow Henry the chance to change and shower first as for its own sake. Carelessness weakened the fibers and he didn't want to lose his utility pouches on the first hard tug in the field.

When neither Jean nor Ororo appeared in the doorway, Scott looked out, but didn't see them. Figuring Jean had gone down to her room to fetch her things and Ro had gone with her, he closed the door and stripped off his shirt.

"We should see what everyone else is up to," Scott said as he sat down on his bed. Henry had been rummaging through his toiletries bag for something, but looked up at him oddly.

"I do believe the Professor has exhorted us to stay as far away from each other as possible," he replied. "That does imply 'no group events'."

"I know that," Scott sighed, letting himself fall back on the bed. He closed his eyes and pushed his visor on to his forehead. "But... I don't like how we always assume that Piotr's going to keep Bobby entertained. What if he wants to go out?"

"Bobby is more than old enough to amuse himself," Henry answered, his voice echoing in the smallish bathroom. The shower started. "Nobody asks Piotr to have his over-heightened sense of responsibility."

"Bobby amusing himself is exactly what I'm worried about," Scott called back, raising his voice to be heard over the rushing water. And while Henry was right - Bobby was going to be seventeen in a few months and could function unsupervised - Scott also felt guilty because he had had to think about it to remember. None of them treated Bobby like anything approaching a grown-up; he remained fixed in their minds as the fifteen-year-old _kid_ who loved his X-Box, loved his Mets, had a secret crush on Michelle Branch and a not-so-secret crush on Ro. None of them hung out with him - Piotr let him trail behind him around the house, certainly, but none of the rest of them really went beyond letting him tag along for a ride into Salem Center. And as soon as he turned seventeen, Bobby wouldn't need them to drive him anywhere and Scott wondered if anyone would make time to see Bobby at all outside of training sessions or meals.

He could feel Jean's presence along their telepathic link before he heard her using her telekinesis to jimmy open the door to the room. It startled him and he wondered if he had dozed off; the water was no longer running in the shower and Henry took the longest showers of anyone on the team. "Lucy, I'm hooome," she called out as she opened the door.

Scott raised himself up on his elbows and jerked his head forward so that his visor would slide back into place. Jean, freshly showered and changed, was standing there watching him and he started to get up.

"Oh, _don't_ move," she purred, eyes dancing wickedly as she approached until she stood between his knees looking down. He could feel the slight shift of the bed as her thighs made contact with the mattress. "I like you just as you are."

"Hey now," Henry cried out in mock horror as he emerged from the bathroom swathed in towels. "Wait until my departure before you start engaging in your debauchery. I don't want you bruising my sensibilities."

"Uh-huh," Jean snorted indelicately, not moving. "As if Ro doesn't brag."

Scott turned his head enough to see Henry grin before disappearing back into the bathroom with his clothes. Turning back to Jean, he found her looking down at him again, a deceptively mild expression on her face considering the emotions he could feel on their link.

"I'll wait," she said primly, folding her hands in front of her chest as if in prayer. "His prudishness is pretend, but your priggishness is real."

"Hey!"

Henry was not long in changing and took no care in tossing his uniform into its bag and the bag into his suitcase. "Au revoir!" he called out and waved expansively before heading out the door.

"So then," Jean said as the door closed behind him. She leaned forward, resting her hands on the bed on either side of his waist and Scott let himself fall back against the bed so that she didn't inadvertently bang her forehead against his visor; bleeding head wounds were a guaranteed mood-killer. His shoulders ached slightly from having supported his upper-body weight, but it didn't really matter with Jean leaning over him like she was, smelling like the apple shampoo she used and breasts visible through the open collar of her shirt. "Where were we? Oh, that's right. Debauchery."

  


* * *

"He's _what_?" Ororo stared at Bobby, clearly irritated as if it had been Bobby's fault.

They had met, as per tradition, at 8:45 in the foyer of the Professor's suite. Scott and Jean had arrived first, then Henry and Ororo - holding hands and sleepily happy in that 'we just spent the night doing everything but sleeping' way - and then Logan. Bobby had shown up alone, looked around and then brought everything to a halt with two simple syllables: "Uh-oh."

"Gone," Jean confirmed, eyes clearing from where they'd been vague a moment before. "According to reception, Colossus checked out at 3AM and took a cab to the airport with an unknown male and female."

She paused, suddenly looking uncertain. "You don't think he might have, you know, gone over to the other side or anything, do you?"

Scott knew what she was thinking of - Finland, where she had had to telepathically keep Piotr from destroying the entrance to the Weapon X facility, a move that would have effectively killing all who had been still inside.

"Not a chance, Jeannie," Logan assured. He had shown up, dropped into the Princess Anne chair by the elevator, and not budged since. If Piotr's disappearance bothered him, it was not enough to disrupt the utter casualness of his body language. "Believe me, I know his good from bad and Piotr Rasputin ain't the type to do the dirty on his pals."

Logan had finished by tilting up his cowboy hat and looking straight at him and Scott felt the anger boiling up and the words spilling out before he could stop them.

"I don't like the way you were looking at me when you said that, Wolverine."

"What do you think, Professor?" Henry asked quickly. He and Ororo were sitting on the pair steps leading down to the drawing room that the Professor could not use because there was no wheelchair access. "Colossus had been unusually quiet these last couple of weeks. Do you think he's just walked out on the team or is this something more nefarious?"

There was no answer and they all turned to face Xavier, who had been sitting apart from them, presumably to better use his telepathy to find Piotr. At least that was what they had thought.

"Professor?"4

  
  


* * *

  


on to the next chapter || back to the index 

  


* * *

Erik Lehnsherr, in this universe, is from Texas oil money. He comes from a well-known and wealthy family, which he has spurned, and was in the public eye before Magneto and the Brotherhood ever existed.

  


* * *

While the X-Men's involvement in the rest of the Ultimate Marvelverse doesn't really become explicit until Ult-X #33, Nicholas Fury's 'threat' can be extrapolated from a similar one made to teenaged Peter Parker in _Ultimate Spiderman_. The Ultimates, while mostly Avengers, are probably closer to X-Factor than any other core-universe group in that they are a federally funded and controlled paramilitary operation serving under the auspices of SHIELD. The founding Ultimates: Giant Man (Hank Pym), Wasp (Janet Pym), Iron Man (Tony Stark), Thor (errr... Thor), and Captain America (Steve Rogers). Dr. Bruce Banner (Hulk), Black Widow (Natasha Romanova), and Hawkeye (Clint Barton) are also around in various capacities. Nick Fury is in charge.

  


* * *

Dialogue taken directly from Ult-X #16, pp 15-16.

  


* * *

Dialogue taken directly from Ult-X #16, pp 21-22. This happens to be the scene that started this story - Piotr leaving the X-Men in mysterious company. I'm fairly sure where he goes from here will be slightly more entertaining than where Mark Millar had him going. And, for the record, the mysterious man and woman are never identified in the comics.

  


* * *

  



	5. Yesterday's News

* * *

Acts of Contrition: Chapter Four 

* * *

> "All right. Ready to mop."
> 
> Alex looked around, checking his preparations. The comforter was bunched up so that it didn't hang over the bed, the surge protector was sitting on his desk, and his laundry bag-cum-hamper was on the desk chair which in turn was out in the hallway. His cell phone was hanging off of his jeans, just in case Scott called with an update -- or a body count.
> 
> The X-Men's headline-whoring world tour had ended with a bang over a week ago, stopped in its tracks before they even left London. It had started in Scotland -- a multiple homicide at a research facility out past the Hebrides, followed by a wholesale slaughter at a McDonalds outside Aberdeen -- and gotten worse from there. Since then, the X-Men had been fighting all over Europe, chasing a mutant body-snatcher the media called Proteus. The true nature of this great menace -- that Proteus was in fact Xavier's own son -- was _not_ public knowledge.
> 
> Since the week before the X-Men's arrival in London, Alex had been buying the much despised _Guardian_ and _Times_ as well as the usual _Telegraph_ to keep up with events. He'd started buying the tabloids as well once Scotland hit. Scott had called three times in the eight days since Aberdeen and he expected another phone call soon -- Tuesday's _Mirror_ had had photographs of what seemed to be the denouement: the sheet-draped body of STRIKE Agent Elisabeth Braddock, Proteus's final victim. 1
> 
> Alex looked around, spotting one corner of his bright yellow backpack poking out from beneath the pile of comforter and went over to yank it free. In the interior padded pocket was his Discman (the iPod of his dreams was another few months of savings away unless Scott was feeling exceptionally generous come Christmas) and in the Discman, where it had been in constant use, was the CD Piotr had given him.
> 
> Popping the disc out and carrying it to the laptop open on his desk, Alex fed it into the CD slot and turned away, trusting WinAmp to do its thing and play automatically. When nothing had happened by the time he had picked up the mop, he sighed in disgust.
> 
> "Come on, barf it up," he growled, leaning the mop handle against his closet door and muttering impolite things about Windows in general and XP and Autoplay in particular as he crossed the room. "I know you know what to do with a music CD. I taught you that already."
> 
> Alex hunched over his computer and squinted at the screen; he was beginning to suspect he needed glasses, a thought that distressed him.
> 
> "Mixed media? What are you talking about?" He wiped his hands on his jeans and hit the keys that would close the window. Opening up Explorer, he clicked on the D: drive and whistled when the list of contents was displayed.
> 
> Other files were listed after the music tracks -- a couple of PDFs, some pictures, a few documents, and what looked to be an Excel spreadsheet judging by the little icon next to the name.
> 
> The names of the files were disturbing; they obviously referred to the Savage Land and the Brotherhood and to Magneto. Alex took a deep breath, his heart suddenly about to burst from his chest and his fingertips tingling... but then the moment left as quickly as it came and there was nothing but calm. He exhaled slowly, frowning at the reaction and its cause. This was not the panicked recognition of an undergraduate during an exam; it was the adrenaline-fueled awareness of a Friends of Humanity lieutenant assessing a situation for potential. It was the acid drip of realization being digested into analysis, the blink of sheer terror where he could almost feel the dangerous information traveling from his eyes to his brain.
> 
> And there really shouldn't be any reason for Piotr to be setting off all those old alarms.
> 
> There was a text file called ReadMeFirst and he clicked on it: 
>
>> Alex,
> 
> In our first conversation, we spoke (rather, I spoke and you sulked) about the comfort of lies and the harder path of the truth.
> 
> I have learned... unpleasant truths. Or at least unpleasant things that I fear may be true. I cannot continue as an X-Man until I find out for sure and I won't endanger any of my teammates while I search. They don't know what I've done, so don't get angry at them for not being able to tell you anything. There's no way I could have warned even Scott without raising suspicion.
> 
> You, on the other hand, are above suspicion. Or, perhaps more accurately, you are constantly suspected. This time, though, you will actually be guilty of something: holding my secrets.
> 
> In this folder you will see not the whole story, but enough. There is more. Alex, I BEG of you: be careful and be circumspect. This is not something to rush into or react impulsively to. Throw your tantrum on your own; don't call Scott. Don't tell anyone. Lives may depend on it.
> 
> I will try to contact you as soon as I can. Don't bother with my cell phone; I won't be carrying it. -- Piotr

"What the fuck did you do, Piotr?"

Alex stared at the list of files, as if the answer would manifest there. The file titles referenced Magneto and the Brotherhood... could Piotr have defected? He tried to remember any particular instance of Piotr sounding exceptionally disillusioned or despairing and failed; Piotr was a born skeptic and had always (as far as Alex had known him) looked at the X-Men with a mildly cocked eyebrow. The X-Men were not the best solution, but they were the best solution that was currently available. Piotr was also intensely private -- he could be happily extroverted, but the more he talked, the less he said about what he was truly thinking and feeling. Alex felt both hurt that Piotr had not said anything to him about any discomfort or dissatisfaction and chagrined that he'd never _noticed_ that Piotr was that unhappy. If that were in fact the case. Which, being the X-Men, was no guarantee.

The question had to be asked: was Piotr's departure his doing or Xavier's? Alex knew about Scott's 'betrayal'; his fury at how his brother could continue to work with and respect a man who had telepathically manipulated him remained unabated. Piotr had been disturbed, too, but not to the same extent. He'd said something vague about pragmatism the one time Alex had tried to discuss it with him, and how ultimately it came down to the fact that Scott himself had forgiven Xavier. Alex had been unsatisfied with Piotr's dismissal just as he had been dubious of Scott's forgiveness.

Nevertheless, intuition said that Xavier would not try the same trick twice; Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch might not be leading the same efficient Brotherhood that their father had, but even they would be highly suspicious of a second convenient defection. There was a question of malleability, too -- or, rather, lack thereof. Scott had been susceptible because he hadn't believed Xavier would cross the line as he did, but while Piotr was a skeptic, he was a skeptic searching for something to believe in. And a mindfucker as brilliant as Xavier would know which strings to pull to elicit the proper reaction.

Of course, all of this was a poor fit against the simple fact that Alex couldn't believe that Piotr would leave his teammates shorthanded against Proteus. He'd cited their safety as a reason to leave (and _that_ was a concern); it didn't make sense that he'd abandon them to a real danger in order to go hunting down a potential one.

But what if he hadn't?

He hadn't spoken to Piotr since before the whole Proteus mess had begun and Scott hadn't said anything about him in the times they had spoken since then... Neither had anyone else. Spinning around on the ball of one foot, Alex looked for where he had tossed the stack of newspapers when he had been preparing to clean.

The newspapers were not read for information, not with a more direct source available and not with the obvious biases of the media outlets. It was read to keep track of those precise biases, to note particular reporters' slants and semantics. The meta was more important than the actual, historiography and not history was the end.

"I can't believe I didn't make a connection," Alex muttered to himself angrily, turning over tabloids and rearranging sections of broadsheets until he was presented with several days' worth of coverage organized by date. It had not gone unnoticed that Piotr had not appeared in any of the photographs, but he had dismissed the absence as the photographers' catering to the prurient desires of the masses -- Jean and Ororo were the overwhelming leaders in terms of number of appearances -- rather than anything else.

"Way to go, dumbass," he chided himself as he verified what he'd been fairly sure he'd remembered accurately. "Too busy reading the subtext to see what's right in front of you."

To the amusement of his small cohort of friends and classmates, Alex read the newspapers with a red pen in hand, underlining especially offensive bits and scribbling sarcastic rejoinders in the margins. He skimmed those red-trimmed articles now, scanning for one simple word that did not appear: "Colossus". There was no mention of the big Russian, nor any particular comment on his absence. It was the latter that concerned him -- Piotr hadn't become so publicity-shy that any reporter familiar with the X-Men wouldn't have noticed a missing member. But how do you miss a giant steel man with the ability to throw cars like baseballs? Had Xavier done something _with Piotr's help_, disappeared him and then messed with the minds of the reporters? Even the Professor couldn't make all of them forget about the missing team member. Or could he?

Nearly tripping over the abandoned mop and bucket, he went back to his desk and the laptop and brought up his web browser. His initial reaction had been to do a search on various media outlets' websites for Piotr, find the last mention of him, but Alex's instinct was that it would be roughly coincidental with the last visit in London.

Alex conjured up and then dismissed a vision of a worldwide telepathic whitewashing, a universal tampering that erased someone from the consciousness of everyone the way they did in the sci-fi movies. Simply erasing Piotr the way Daffy Duck got erased in that cartoon. That he couldn't immediately say that it was impossible for Xavier to do...

Shaking his head to rid himself of the last vestiges of Telepath-Inspired Nightmare #5, he minimized the browser window and was faced once again with the Explorer list of files.

Randomly clicking on a file, Alex watched as his video player started. It was a clip of an elegantly-attired man speaking earnestly and passionately about mutant rights, his deep voice almost seductive as he explained the wonders of evolution and nature's gifts to humanity. There was something familiar about him, but it wasn't until the camera panned back to the richly appointed sitting room that it clicked. "Fuck. It's Magneto."

Back when he had been with the Friends of Humanity, Alex had done endless hours of research on the various mutant threats. He knew all about Erik Lehnsherr, son of Holocaust survivors who had turned their laundry service into a multi-billion dollar dry cleaning empire, and the grand utopian schemes that he had funded and supervised. The connection had been hard to draw -- Lehnsherr had disappeared years ago and his family had seemed disinclined to look for him; Magneto was a relatively new phenomenon and had arrived spouting very different rhetoric than Lehnsherr had.

It was generally assumed that Erik Lehnsherr was dead, killed on some wacky voyage taken with his then-partner Charles Xavier. Xavier, the rare time he was asked about Lehnsherr in interviews, did not dispute the assumption. Nobody asked about the children. Lehnsherr had taken pains to keep the young Wanda and Pietro out of the spotlight, beyond the obvious mentioning that they were mutants, and time had seemingly erased what little traces he had failed to obscure.2

Thinking of the children who had grown up to be the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver made Alex remember that he still wasn't sure that Piotr hadn't gone over to join the Brotherhood on his own volition and without prompting from Xavier. He logged in to the web interface of his 'clean' email address, the one he kept secret from Xavier and the rest of the clan at the mansion except for Piotr, who had his own similar account. If Piotr had sent him a message through that account, he would have gotten it already, but just in case it had gotten caught up in the server's overeager spam filters, it didn't hurt to check.

"Nothing," Alex muttered, taking the opportunity to delete the three messages offering to enlarge certain cherished parts of his anatomy. "Next brilliant idea?"

The next idea, of course, was to call his brother.

The ringing of church bells for the top of the hour in the not-so-great distance reminded Alex of other pressing matters -- the pile of belongings currently sitting in the hallway and the full bucket of soapy water on his floor. While mopping the admittedly dirty floor and straightening a room that hadn't been presentable since before his Early Literature exam were absolutely less important than finding out what had happened to Piotr, getting the housekeeping done before most of his neighbors returned from classes had also been a very well-conceived plan.

Besides, there was nothing to be done that a half-hour delay would affect; Piotr had been gone long enough that if the X-Men knew where he was, they would have made a move by now. And, Alex hoped, Scott would have _said_ something. But that was a hope that had started out an expectation and Alex wasn't sure what to think about that.

It would be hypocritical to be offended that Scott hadn't told him that Piotr was missing during any of their conversations. Scott was the field commander of a paramilitary group - if he wasn't keeping secrets to protect his team, he wasn't doing his job. And it was something closer to foolish to assume that just because Scott was generally open and honest -- too much so for Alex's comfort on many occasions -- that it was a natural consequence for Scott to be incapable of guile or subterfuge. Alex had always considered himself the slyer of the two, but that was a measure of attitude and not ability and perhaps he had forgotten that a bit.

He was nonetheless annoyed that Scott had chosen this particular moment to be commander and not brother. Piotr was his _friend_, more so than anyone else in that would-be apostolic brat-pack, and Scott knew that he cared a lot more about what happened to Piotr than how fast the Wolverine recovered from being hit by a truck.

It was closer to an hour before Alex moved his belongings-laden chair back into his now-clean room and closed the door. The space still smelled heavily of detergent, but the windows were open -- his mutation making him oblivious to the chilly air rushing in -- and it would dissipate soon enough. Sitting down on the "day bed" (a joke made legitimate by the purchase of some throw pillows; his nominal roommate lived in town with his girlfriend and didn't even carry keys to the room), Alex took one last look over the newspapers piled next to him and opened up his phone.

"Hey," Scott answered his phone, sounding as if he were intentionally keeping his voice down. "I was gonna call you later."

"And tell me where Piotr is?"

A sigh, also hushed. Scott wouldn't have answered the phone if he had been in a place where he couldn't or shouldn't have been speaking, but where would he be that he'd have to keep his voice down? "If I _knew_ where he was, I'd tell you."

Alex made a noise that sounded closer to 'irritated' than the 'frustrated' he was hoping for. "And when were you going to tell me that he was gone in the first place? Why did I have to guess? Do you even know if he's still alive?"

"Alex!" Sharply, loudly, and he could almost see Scott wince at raising his voice. "We've been a little _busy_..."

"I'm taking your defensiveness to mean that if you don't know where he went, you at least know why," Alex broke in ruthlessly. "Piotr wouldn't disappear while his friends were in danger, which means he's been gone since before this crap with Proteus began. What's going on, Scott? What happened that you didn't tell me the _three_ times we spoke since Piotr's been gone?"

"Would you let me get a goddamned word in edgewise?" Scott growled. There was an odd pause before he continued and Alex realized that Jean must be listening in; it was possible to carry on telepathic and spoken conversations at once, but most people couldn't and the brief-but-random silences were dead giveaways. "Yes, Piotr's been gone since before Proteus. No, we don't know where and no, we don't know why. He checked out of the hotel in London in the middle of the night and took a cab to the airport. After that, we don't know."

Alex frowned more from the realization that Jean was listening in than from what Scott said or how he said it -- Scott sounded more defeated than concerned. Any chance of his having a serious discussion with his brother about Piotr's motives was gone; Scott wouldn't say anything to Xavier, but Alex was sure Jean had no such compunctions. Jean's loyalty to the Professor bordered on the fanatical, he thought, and while Scott and even Piotr thought that he was being unfair and not a little paranoid, Alex had never seen proof to his liking that Jean would ever think Charles Xavier wrong about anything. It was another something that disappointed him about Jean, a person he was sure he'd like if she had more reasonable politics and none of the ethical fluidity of a telepath.

Telepathy seemed to bring with it an elitism, an awareness of power, that disgusted him more than impressed him. Even while Xavier was helping him to build mental shields, Alex had been constantly aware that they didn't actually keep a telepath _out_. He'd done his best to try to change the locks on his mental doors once he'd left Xavier's school, but he had no illusions that any telepath could come and go through his thoughts at will. That Scott had gone and allowed Jean to hardwire a connection into his consciousness, to take away any and all pretexts of privacy, even after Xavier had screwed around, had practically _raped_ him mentally he didn't get it. Not at all. And that, almost more than any philosophical differences, forced him to keep Scott at a greater distance than either brother might like. Scott wasn't just Scott anymore - he was an open wiretap to Jean and from her to Xavier. If Alex wanted Xavier to know what he was saying, he'd call him directly.

"How did you find out about Piotr?" Scott asked when Alex said nothing in reply. "It's not in the papers, is it?"

Alex glanced down at the pile of papers by his right calf and frowned.

"No, which is really sort of odd, don't you think? Piotr's very hard to miss." Lying to Scott was a more daunting task now that he was linked to a telepath - it was two people to convince, not just one, and he wasn't quite sure how the link worked in terms of what Jean 'heard'. He did, however, suspect that once her telepathy was no longer in play, Jean had absolutely no ability to read people. "There was a picture in the paper of all of you guys - except for Bobby, of course - and Piotr wasn't there. I got suspicious and backread. He wasn't mentioned in any of the articles on your adventures."

"Adventures," Scott repeated sourly. Alex held his breath, waiting to see if his reasoning was accepted. "And we'd better come up with a story if all it took was you poring over the papersWhat did they say?"

"Usual crap," Alex replied, careful not to show any relief at his story being sold and bought. Scott's estimation of his 'obsessive' traits gave him leeway; his brother would conveniently forget that Alex had committed several violent felonies, but he was almost proud of how that time had focused Alex's intellectual skills. "Calls for mutant registration, mutant genocide, mutant rights, a mutant nation where they could keep an eye on everyone. And then there was the society stuff -- you got a peer's daughter killed and Xavier used to be married to a Scottish peeress. Of course, that last bit's not news to us, but it was to the press."3

"You _knew_ already?" Scott almost squeaked.

"You _didn't_?" He was surprised and yet he wasn't. Scott had been the one to tell him that Proteus was David Xavier, but Alex had assumed that Scott had known all along. Suddenly, Piotr's seemingly extreme reaction to whatever he found - which _must_ be related to Xavier and Magneto - seemed less outrageous. They knew nothing. They were going along, risking their lives, for a man they barely knew. "Just how much -- or how little -- do you know about Xavier?"

A very complicated-sounding sigh. "Not as much as we thought," Scott finally replied in a tone of voice that made it very clear that he didn't want to get into the topic.

"Why didn't you tell me about Piotr when you spoke to me during the week?" Alex asked, obliging the unspoken command to change the subject. If he pushed too hard, either Scott or Jean was going to remember that he was former FoH and then any chance of getting information would be foiled as the conversation slid unstoppably down the slippery slope of actions taken in support of ideals. "I could have emailed him. Called his folks or something."

"Since when do you speak Russian?" Scott asked with a snort, accepting Alex's agreement with obvious relief. "We tried his cell phone. It's been turned off since he left. We tried his family in Siberia, but they haven't heard from him and we didn't want to scare them unnecessarily."

"Unnecessarily?"

"What were we supposed to say?" Scott asked testily. "'I'm sorry, Mrs. Rasputin, but we think your son has either gotten himself killed or worse'? There are no good scenarios for this. Piotr's strong and smart. Either he's in a whole lot of trouble or..."

"Or he's dead?" Alex was genuinely bitter -- if Piotr _was_ dead, it would be as much the fault of Xavier as whatever Piotr himself got into. For all of their talk and their training, the X-Men wouldn't have been able to multitask well enough to even begin to look for Piotr while they were fighting Proteus -- a weakness that was a matter of strategy and not shorthandedness. Most of the team was only a liability against a body-snatcher like the late David Xavier, but neither Xavier nor Scott-as-Cyclops would have considered dividing the team's energies. It was inefficient at best and, at worst, it smacked of Xavier putting his personal agenda before that of the team... or of Xavier _letting_ Piotr go.

"He's not dead," Scott replied firmly. "He might wish he was..."

"Rather than face the wrath of the X-Men for deserting?" Alex asked sourly at what sounded like a weak attempt at gallows humor. "What did Xavier say?"

"Rather than end up in Weapon X's clutches again," Scott returned angrily. "Or someone like them. We'd be fools to think that they were the only ones to be doing crap like that. And the Professor's just as worried as the rest of us. We know you don't like him, 'Lex, but he really does care about us."

Alex frowned at the "we". Jean was no longer a passive observer in this conversation -- if she ever had been. "What does Jean think? And why can't Xavier find him with that mutant locator doohickey?"

"Jean's as concerned as the rest of us," Scott answered irritatedly. He must be getting if from both sides, Alex mused. Him on the phone and Jean in his head, both mistrusting the other openly while Scott was stuck in the middle. "And the Professor hasn't been able to locate him on Cerebro."

"Doesn't that mean he's dead?" Alex had had Cerebro explained to him. More than once. He still didn't quite understand how it worked, still didn't truly understand its limitations -- or, rather, he didn't accept the _vagueness_ with which the explanations had been couched. The machine was so very precise and the telepaths who used it so powerful on their own, it seemed a little ridiculous that it had _any_ limitations.

"Not necessarily," Scott replied firmly, his confidence buoyed again by being back on surer ground. _He_ had accepted the explanations offered to him. "It could mean that he's in a place that's got psi-shielding."

"And this is a good thing how?" Alex sat up, mind racing through possibilities. "Isn't that just bad guys and the government?"

"Mostly," Scott agreed. "But there are lots of natural psi shields. Some metals block psionic energy -- remember that helmet Magneto wore? There are whole countries that Cerebro can't see. If Piotr wanted to not be found, he'd know where to go."

"That's a relief and it isn't," Alex admitted honestly as he looked over to where his laptop was still open on his desk, Explorer still displaying the list of files. If Piotr were doing something with or about the Brotherhood, then it stood to reason that they were based somewhere beyond the mental reach of Xavier.

"Tell me about it," Scott sighed, sounding exhausted for the first time in the conversation. "But if Piotr _is_ hiding from us... I'd like to know why."

Well, that solves that question, Alex thought sourly. Scott sounded too _hurt_ to be lying about that. "Was he acting weird or anything before he left?"

A noise that sounded like what would accompany a shrug were they face-to-face. "He'd been quiet the last few days in London. You saw him," Scott reminded him. "The Professor had had some sharp words for him at breakfast; he wasn't happy with how he and Logan had carried out their assignment... Of course, it wasn't _Piotr_ who ended up getting Bobby hurt."

"Do you think Piotr know that Bobby's hurt?" Alex asked, ignoring Scott's presumed bout of self-flagellation.

"I can't imagine he would," Scott answered. "We've kept it out of the papers. I mean, I suppose he could, but..."

It was a sudden thought; the injuries to Iceman had made the papers because they were so spectacular -- a _car_ had landed on him. Bobby and Piotr were close in a fashion, Bobby serving as a sort of surrogate younger brother for the siblings Piotr had left behind. If Piotr knew, he'd be very deeply upset; he wouldn't have left after it happened and he might even have tried to return.

"Could he have been to see Bobby when you guys weren't around?"

A bitter laugh. "Not likely. The only reason we're here now is that Jean's making sure the guards don't see us. The Drakes are eighteen shades of Really Fucking Pissed; they've got protection orders out against all of us and a flock of lawyers out to nail the Professor to a cross."4

"What's Xavier doing about it?" Alex got up to close the window facing east; there was a lawn frequently used as a rugby pitch in that direction and the shouts and grunts were distracting.

"I don't know. He was talking about dismantling the school and stuff. He took Bobby getting hurt really badly..."

"He should," Alex cut in. "There was no reason for Bobby to be out there. He couldn't do anything _but_ get hurt against Proteus."

"You sound like Fury," Scott said ruefully. The SHIELD guy, Alex mentally supplied. "But mostly the Professor blames himself for putting us in this situation in the first place. 'Child Crusaders' he called us. That's why he's talking about closing the school."

Alex rolled his eyes. Leave it to Xavier to start feeling remorse after the fact instead of properly assessing the situation beforehand. That, or this was a public plea for sympathy for in what was a very anti-mutant climate. "He's right. At least about the part where you all are too damned young to be saving the world."

"Don't start, 'Lex," Scott begged. "Please don't start with that now. I know how you feel about this. And you know how I feel. And none of that matters a goddamn bit right now."

"Fine," Alex said quickly. It frustrated him immensely that Scott didn't actually _disagree_ with him, that instead Scott was close to _agreeing_, at least as far as the average age of the X-Men went. But instead of Scott standing up for himself and his teammates and demanding the right to whatever parts of their childhoods had been taken from them, Scott was willing to sacrifice his happiness and theirs at the altar of mutant rights. No matter how many times Alex reminded him that the Ultimates could both save the world and represent the genetic freaks of the planet, Scott clung to the differences: the Ultimates were consciously and intentionally a mutant-free team. [Alex had his theories regarding Janet Pym, but there was no way SHIELD was going to confess _that_.]5 And even if the X-Men shouldn't be doing what they did, there were no better candidates and thus their obligation stood. It was faulty logic based on unsteady premises, but Alex knew that no good would come from pointing that out here and now. "Where are you? In Paris?"

"New York," Scott answered, sounding relieved. "We flew back right away. We'll be in England over the weekend for Elisabeth Braddock's funeral."

"You gonna have any free time?"

"I'll try to make some." There was another of those 'telepathic conversation pauses' and then Scott spoke again. "Listen, we gotta get out of here. They're doing grand rounds now. I'll try to call you later or tomorrow."

They said their goodbyes and hung up. Alex left the phone on the day bed and got up to stretch. Too much to think about. He looked at the clock, the laptop, and then out the still-open window. Enough time to get a run in and then shower before heading over for his Topics in Earth Sciences seminar; running helped him focus his thoughts and if he didn't come to some sort of satisfactory decision before class, he'd be sitting there thinking about Piotr's files instead of the isotopes of oxygen in meteorites.

* * *

_Ultimate X-Men_ #16-20, the World Tour arc. In the Ultimateverse, Moira McTaggart married Charles Xavier and they had a son, David. David Xavier is an amalgam, of sorts, of Proteus (Moira's son Kevin McTaggart) and Legion (David, Xavier's son by Gabrielle Haller) with Proteus's powers and his backstory -- Kevin McTaggart, prisoner of his powers and dangerously unstable, hunts down his estranged father. [click here for a quick synopsis of the Proteus storyline from _Uncanny_].

The _Ultimate_ storyline follows the _Uncanny_ one closely enough -- Proteus slaughters large numbers of Scots, wreaks havoc by possessing the various X-types, and is ultimately killed by Colossus. The key change in _Ult-X_ is that Proteus is killed while in the body of STRIKE (the British SHIELD) agent Elisabeth Braddock -- aka core-canon's Psylocke. [Don't worry, Psylocke fans, the word "Kwannon" does appear in later issues, hint hint.]

The change from the _Ult-X_ story to this one is simple: Piotr Rasputin was not present at the final confrontation and the X-Men defeated Proteus through other means. Bobby Drake's injuries are from the books -- he is crushed by a thrown automobile.

* * *

_Ult-X_ #26, the prologue to the (exorable) _Return of the King_ arc, Mark Millar's last, was told entirely in flashback and is pretty much the history of Charlie and Erik, from Xavier's exceptionally cold-hearted abandonment of Moira and David to the gradual fissure between the two men. Six years ago, Erik Lehnsherr gave an interview in _Rolling Stone_ where he talked of mutant rights and plans for utopias and whatnot. The young Lehnsherr twins (they've actually not been given surnames, but it's reasonable to assume that Wanda and Pietro use the surname of the parent that raised them) were seen running around in the background. The Lehnsherr family is large, wealthy, and based in Texas. Erik is estranged from them.

* * *

The X-Men didn't find out about Xavier's marriage or son until arriving in Scotland to deal with Proteus. They were also told (by a disbelieving and weary Moira) that Xavier could not possibly be the sole funder of the team. It's a tweak on core canon, of course -- there's no possible way Xavier _could_ have the money to fund the X-Men, even assuming Lilandra gave him all of the technology (which she didn't).

* * *

Bobby Drake's parents, while overprotective, react with reasonable alarm when their son is critically injured fighting Proteus. They then get litigious, preparing to sue Xavier to the edge and beyond and Xavier really doesn't have a prayer of stopping this until a recovered Bobby betrays his parents and sides publicly with his teacher.

* * *

In the _Ultimates_, Janet Pym (The Wasp) is privately revealed by her husband to be a mutant -- she lays eggs and does the whole buggy thing -- although she has hidden it from him and the rest of SHIELD. It is a conscious decision of SHIELD -- specifically of Nick Fury and Betsy Ross -- to distance the Ultimates from mutants, so there are no mutant members. At least no public members.

* * *


	6. The Long and Winding Circle

* * *

Acts of Contrition: Chapter Five 

* * *

Piotr came awake with a start. In his right hand, his cell phone buzzed and vibrated twice, then stopped. He looked over at the digital clock on the nightstand between the beds. Twenty before three. Beyond the clock, in the other bed, Bobby was asleep, sprawled across the double bed. Piotr closed his eyes.

He knew who had called, just as he knew his phone would say "unknown caller" if he looked. He had a half-hour to decide whether to obey the summons.

The message had been delivered during one of the public events in London, a book signing. Piotr had been standing away from the crush of fans and protesters, watching both groups with uneasy eyes, when he'd felt a breeze and a ghost of a touch on his hip. Quicksilver, delivering a slip of paper with instructions.

In the three days since he'd read (and burned) the message, Piotr had mulled over his decision a million and one times. He'd been sure enough that he'd go with the twins that he'd given Alex the CD, but the next morning there had been the youth club meeting that had gone so very well and three dozen awestruck, happy faces looking up at him and Cyclops and Storm and he'd wondered again if maybe this wasn't the lesser evil.

And yet "lesser evil" didn't seem acceptable, either. The protesters were not getting quieter or fewer in number. The supporters were not increasing -- were _decreasing_, it seemed, with each headline. The message was getting out, but it was also getting grossly misinterpreted. The _Guardian_ had run three progressively more virulent editorials pushing for mutant registration and a Ministry for Mutant Affairs to oversee the registered population. The EU, which had not even responded to Xavier's request for an audience, had gone from "no comment" a week ago to "we shall have a statement soon" on the mutant question.

And the Professor himself was... showing the strain. Eager to preach his ideas to a world stage and anxious that that chance was getting closer to realization, he was increasingly short, sharp, and impatient with the team. Solicitousness and cooperation may have been the order of the day publicly, but privately the team was on edge and frustrated, finding no comfort within the group to balance out the hatred without. The dichotomy between what the Professor said publicly and what he said to his students was also becoming more obvious --Xavier may have continued to use the semantics of his program of appeasement, but the angry, even ugly tone of his voice was at odds with his message. The Dream, too, was showing signs of stress fracture.

Back in Westchester, the idea of proving to the world that mutants could be productive contributors to society had seemed to be the goal; it was what Xavier told his pupils and anyone else who would listen. And while Piotr had felt like nothing so much as a dancing bear trained to perform for the audiences thrilling to the proximity of such a dangerous, if subdued, creature... it had been abasement for a good cause. But here, now, in the glare of the spotlight, it felt like an act, the speech of a character Xavier was not perfectly portraying. The Dream, when detailed by this flawed actor, sounded like a step to some greater plan, an 'agenda' that the X-Men hadn't been properly briefed on yet. Something less altruistic, something a little more _pragmatic_ than the Professor's usual sunny idealism. Somewhere along the line, it had stopped being so much about integration of the species and started being about... something else. It had not taken Alex's chronic and corrosive cynicism to notice that Xavier privately referred to the baseline humans as "the homo sapiens" and it wasn't just Bobby who thought of references to _Planet of the Apes_.

They had all been doing their best to avoid each other when not required to be together, so these weren't ideas explored with Scott or anyone else. He'd kept his thoughts to himself, a traitorous ember in his belly he didn't know whether to fan into flame or snuff out. Was it a geniune reaction to the situation or simply prideful resentment? Xavier was critical of all of their actions, picking apart even the most productive of actions to find the mean motivation underneath and then holding up the unearthed germ as a sign of carelessness, of selfishness, of individual desires over the benefit to mutant kind, of incipient treachery. Piotr kept his tongue, but he knew his own resentment was close to the surface, waiting for the worst possible opportunity to break out. Was this, now, his eruption?

Piotr opened his eyes and looked at the clock again. Ten of three. Twenty minutes.

But what were the twins offering him? Truth? Safety? A way to redeem himself? A means to finally figure out what it is he believed in? Or did they assume that, knowing the truth, Piotr would simply choose to join the Brotherhood... no. Whatever it was the twins wanted from him, it wasn't another mutant terrorist. He only hoped that it wasn't worse. He was under no illusion that 'going home' was an option the twins were providing, no more than Xavier did. You could run off to join the circus, but there was no escape from it.

Scott had been mentally induced to run away. Magneto had been lobotomized to stay. If he did not like what the twins had to say, could he return from this defection -- could he make his plea to Xavier and apologize for his lack of faith? And if he could, would he? He had been unhappy before he had been able to verbalize it, before he had even been able to realize it. A return to a life he'd increasingly found untenable...

Five to three.

The twins were still on speaking terms with Xavier and it had crossed Piotr's mind that they were part of an elaborate test of his loyalties. But he didn't think so; the twins' anger at Xavier burned too brightly. They did not know about their father... or did they know more than they said, did they think that he could lead them to him? And if that were the case, did he have the right to take umbrage when he had already passed up opportunities to tell them the truth? Did he owe the twins a penance, too?

Wanda and Pietro were enigmatic to him, to all of the X-Men save Scott, whom Piotr thought only learned of them what he'd wanted to see. The twins looked at the team with undisguised pity, their disgust with the X-Men's lack of knowledge was but thinly veiled. Dull tools in Xavier's hands, servants and not partners in the battle to secure mutants a place in the world.

The Brotherhood under the twins had been markedly different since Magneto's 'death'. Wanda and Pietro were obviously making changes in the organization they had inherited -- and just as obviously facing a power struggle from within, presumably by those who did not view leadership of the Brotherhood as inheritable. The result was a schizophrenic association made more terrifying by its unpredictability. More focused and yet more inept. More subtle in its targets and messages, but with obvious, public betrayals and defections. The Brotherhood's new tactics, presumably at the instigation of the twins, were about retribution and exposure, directed attacks against specific anti-mutant events. But the mass spectacles, the gratiutous violence, the flash and bombast that had been Magneto and his plans for world domination were not gone. They were still around, yet they were no more successful and no less ludicrous in their grandiosity. Scott and Alex both thought that these gory, messy failures were the compromise the twins had to make to keep power -- the sop to the extremist wing of the Brotherhood, a faction made up of the unstable, the sociopathic, and the bitter that Magneto had collected and harnessed with the promise of revenge upon a world that shunned them.

His internal clock ticked louder. Now or never. He looked at the clock, its red digits glowing a shade not dissimilar to the one emitted by Scott's visor. Two minutes past three. What would Scott say? What would Alex? Part of him wished for their counsel -- between Scott's unshakeable faith and Alex's inability to believe, there would have been wisdom, or at least sureness where his own steps were faltering. Do this or don't. Stay or go. Martyr or sacrifice. He was no captain and he could abandon a sinking ship, but how could he save his friends from so far away? Did they need saving or was it just him? Would Logan understand? Would he protect Bobby for him, keep what little bit of innocence had not been torn away by idealogical zeal and inhuman cruelty? Would Bobby forgive him for what he'd see as abandonment and betrayal?

He pulled back the blankets in a quick, quiet motion.

* * *

"This way," Wanda said over her shoulder as she started walking toward the entrance to the terminal. Pietro muttered behind him, pulling out paper money and coins and trying to figure out how much to tip the cabbie.

Piotr staggered a bit as he exited the cab. He was tired and tense --it was four in the morning and he was feeling the prickly edge of the hyperawareness that came from sleep deprivation. The airport was busier than he'd have thought for this time of the day and he was jostled by both cranky cabbies and uniformed porters as he followed Wanda's rapidly retreating form. Pietro was by his side with a suddenness that was annoying; he was too anxious to be civil, so he said nothing at all to Pietro's continued quiet grumbling at his sister's unconcerned pace.

He'd arrived in the lobby with his backpack over one shoulder and his jacket in his hand. Not seeing the twins, there had been a quick moment of fear that he was too late. But he'd felt a breeze warmer than the dry cool blast of the air conditioner and there was a note in his hand telling him to check out and meet them in the cab waiting outside. He did, smiling impersonally at the concierge, who had obviously known who he was and had just as obviously wanted to know why he was leaving in the middle of the night.

It had been pleasant and quiet when he had stepped outside and he had looked around quickly before heading down the stairs to the cab idling at the curb. The doorman followed, hurrying along to get to the door first. Piotr had let him open the rear door and had pressed a tip into his hand as he had passed him. It was one of the retro-looking cabs with rumble seats and Wanda and Pietro had been sitting across from each other on the driver's side. "Heathrow Airport," Wanda had said loudly in a voice that didn't sound at all like hers.

Now, Wanda seemed to be leading them toward the British Airways area, but she suddenly stopped to wait for them, swinging her duffel bag around to rest on her hip so that she could open the zippered outer compartment. She pulled out a makeup bag and retrieved a lipstick and a compact mirror.

"We're going to pick up our boarding passes," Pietro said quietly as Wanda re-applied her dark red lipstick. "Use your passport. We've booked you a ticket. We're on the 6:45 flight to Kennedy."

Piotr raised an eyebrow and looked meaningfully at Pietro, who shook his head to indicate that this was neither the time nor the place to discuss the matter. So instead he watched Wanda purse her lips and critically inspect her work.

The line at the check-in was short; they were among the first passengers, all Americans. Piotr smiled blearily at the ticket agent, dutifully answered the questions about his luggage, and was handed his boarding pass after a quick-but-thorough examination of his passport photo. The passport was real, but fake. Piotr did not have American citizenship, nor even a green card. He was an illegal alien that SHIELD had chosen not to turn over to the INS; Nick Fury had barked angrily at the underling who had pointed out Piotr's status. Piotr took a moment to mourn the loss of that promised protection.

Pietro was already done and waiting when Piotr finished; Wanda was smiling patiently at the clerk who had to change terminals after the computer he was working on suddenly froze, the sound of his profuse apologies carrying in the pre-dawn quiet. Wanda wiggled her fingers at the computer and giggled for the benefit of the ticket agent and Piotr suddenly realized that Wanda had used her hex magic to crash the computer. He wondered why, but Pietro, surveying the area with (false, Piotr thought) casualness next to him, didn't seem inclined to answer any questions.

They proceeded without incident through the next phase of security and the metal detectors ("You won't set that thing off, will you?" Pietro had asked, gesturing toward the detector. "Not if I take off my watch," he had replied, too tired to keep the irritation from his voice) and headed toward the waiting area.

There weren't many passengers about; most of them were sitting in the waiting areas or in the just-opened coffee bar and sandwich shops. Everyone moved with the slowness of the exhausted whether they were half-drowsing over cool tea and doughy crumpets or the packed meals from home, brought along to avoid the exorbitant expense of airport fare.

"You boys go buy a newspaper or a candy bar or something," Wanda instructed as they reached the concourse. "I've got to make a pit stop."

Piotr was inclined to wait where he was standing, but Pietro pulled him by the elbow. "Come on," he said. "Let's go get a Cara-milk."

They crossed the concourse walkway, past the shop with the cheesy London souvenirs and t-shirts with "Kiss Me, I'm Scottish" written on them in tartan-print letters and the duty-free store. Piotr paused in front of the little bookstore with its potboilers and romances. There was a tell-all book about the royal family featured on one pile and a few copies of Xavier's book on another. Piotr shuddered and turned away, nearly bumping into Pietro, who merely glared at him. There was another touristy shop with allegedly upper crust British items like pipes and marmalade and ivory combs and then a newspaper stand.

Pietro bought five Cara-milk bars and a tube of Smarties, looking over at Piotr before adding a _Spectator_ to the pile. As Pietro examined the coins in his open palm to try to count out correct change, an announcement requested building facilities to report to the second floor south causeway. As the candy was being put into a brown paper bag, a security guard walked past and Piotr could hear the chatter from his walkie-talkie. A burst pipe, it sounded like.

Wanda found them as they headed toward the waiting area. "Come on," she said. "This way."

Instead of making a left toward the escalator that would lead them to their gate, Wanda turned right. She looked behind them quickly and then indicated a door marked as an emergency stairwell. Pietro pulled something out of his pocket and nodded, pushing the door open and reaching up to clamp something on to the alarm box with a speed too quick for Piotr's eyes to follow. As he passed beneath, he saw that Pietro had placed a long, thin piece of metal sheet over the contacts -- the circuit remained closed and the alarm didn't sound. Wanda headed down the stairs and Piotr nearly stumbled as he turned to watch Pietro close the door carefully behind them.

They paused at the landing for the next floor down for Pietro to perform the same trick. Wanda, obviously having scouted out the area earlier, led them around the corner and into a ladies' washroom that smelled strongly of disinfectant cleaner. Piotr was initially surprised to see no matron, but then he realized that he was mistaken. A light-skinned black woman, thickened in the waist by middle age, was propped up in one of the stalls, a thin line of blood trickling down her bruised forehead and her hands folded gently into her lap.

The washroom door had a lock and Pietro turned it, pushing the matron's empty chair in front of the slatted vents at the bottom of the door. He crossed to the counter where Wanda had put her bag and opened his, pulling out a small device that looked like a cell phone.

"Wha..."

Pietro put his finger to his lips and Piotr stilled. He watched in silence as Pietro fiddled with the small machine. Wanda looked behind her once to see what they were doing, but left them be, instead sifting through the bags; he could hear the rustling of plastic shopping bags echo awkwardly around the washroom.

The device was some sort of sensor or detector, Piotr realized as Pietro, obviously satisfied with its settings, started waving it slowly around him. Head arms -- Pietro silently indicated for Piotr to raise his arms -- torso, waist, legs, shoes. Pietro fiddled with the sensor once again and took Piotr's backpack and jacket, scanned them, and returned them to him.

"He's clean," Pietro announced, turning off the sensor. He tossed it to Wanda, who caught it without turning to see where it was.

"Good," she said in a low voice. "I was getting very tired of the silent movie thing."

"Does this mean you get to tell me what we're doing now?" Piotr asked, relaxing enough to lean against the brace between the stall walls and door.

Pietro laughed sardonically. "And spoil the surprise?"

What began next was a transformation that left Piotr in appreciative awe of how _professional_ the twins were -- this was not the blustery, blundering preparation that the X-Men had assumed went on before Brotherhood actions. It was cool, efficient, and smooth, done with the calmness of rote. Piotr had new respect -- and fear -- of a Brotherhood run by leaders with a command of the subtle.

Inside the plastic bags Wanda had been retrieving was hair dye; all three were working toward various shades of dark brown. Wanda stopped to pull out a bottle of chloroform and make sure the matron was still unconscious while Pietro rifled through her pockets to find her wallet, which he tossed on the pile of their things on the counter.

"What?" he asked as he caught Piotr frowning at him. "She's only got twenty on her. She'll get the rest back later. It'll look like a mugging this way."

"Here," Wanda said, thrusting a folded pair of blue jeans at him. Her head, like his and Pietro's, was topped with a cheap plastic shower cap. It would have been ridiculous under any other circumstance, but Piotr was too tired and too numb to appreciate the ludicrousness. "Change into these while we're waiting for your hair."

"What's wrong with mine?" he asked, ignoring for the present the likely case that they didn't fit.

"They're not your style, sweetheart," she answered in what Piotr assumed was a Texas twang. He'd been in the United States long enough to differentiate between broad classes of English-speaking accents --he could tell an Australian from a Irishman, but was still unable to discern regional American accents beyond certain obvious ones like "southern" and "Brooklyn" and there were some he found impossible to understand. Bobby loved to test his English comprehension skills by affecting various 'accents' and remembering the awful, hammy attempts brought back his anxiety for him; Bobby would need someone to comfort him.

Bobby would be very afraid for him, he knew. Even if the others suspected the truth -- that he'd left of his own will -- Bobby would hold out. It was how he was -- determined to believe the best of everyone until proven wrong. For as long as Piotr was in hiding from the X-Men, Bobby would believe that Piotr had been taken, that he'd been forced away, that he'd never abandon him. And _that_ is what hurt -- that he _had_ abandoned Bobby, who, unlike the others, had no one else to turn to. And whom he'd promised never to leave behind. If the others found out, they would be various shades of pragmatic or irate, depending on how fervently they believed in the Professor's ideas. Piotr didn't want to think about what the Professor would do or think, as much because he feared a fate as cruel as Magneto's as for the lingering fear this entire episode was not what it seemed. And that perhaps this was a punishment for his ill-conceived crisis of faith.

Piotr shook out the jeans to unfold them. They were Levis and had the size stamped on the back label. His size. Frowning at the thought of putting unshod feet on the washroom floor, he crouched down carefully and untied his sneakers without looking down, unknotting the laces by feel so that the dye would not drip or the shower cap shift. He stood slowly and undid the button of his black jeans, unembarrassed by Wanda's sly observation. Pietro was sitting in the matron's chair, reading the magazine.

Changing pants without moving his head was harder than he'd thought and he ended up shooting one of his sneakers at Pietro as he kicked off one leg of his old jeans. Pietro looked annoyed, but returned the shoe without comment. The new jeans were looser in the leg than what he usually preferred, not baggy but certainly with extra room. He retied his shoes, valiantly resisting the urge to scratch at where plastic cap met skin. The dye smelled vaguely flowery, some artificial fruit essence or whatever had been on the package. The end result was to be something close to mahogany, if the hair on the coyly smiling woman on the cardboard box was to be believed.

Scott's hair color, when he wasn't getting it highlighted or otherwise altered. Scott went to a salon in Rye to get it done, never admitting out loud that he didn't trust himself to get the colors right when he couldn't see the difference between chestnut highlights and orange ones. Piotr had never understood why Scott had always dyed his hair in some fashion and yet Scott had so obviously been working on an impetus stronger than mere vanity or whim. It was, he had finally decided, either an attempt to look like someone or a desire to stop looking like someone and, even after meeting the blond Alex, Piotr hadn't been able to choose which option sounded less... pained.

Did Xavier know how badly Scott was broken inside? He must. Jean must. Scott was so very good at hiding it -- at hiding everything about himself. In plain sight. There wasn't a resident of the mansion that didn't know that Scott liked his coffee strong, his spaghetti underdone, and ZZ Top on the CD player. They all knew that Scott liked _The Sopranos_, hated _Friends_, and didn't understand why anyone liked watching basketball on TV. He'd read everything the Professor had ever assigned to any of the other students, but never the Bible. He'd pined over Jean, but nobody knew if she was his first girlfriend. He could ride a motorcycle as well as drive a car, but nobody knew if he'd had those skills before meeting Xavier. Nobody knew how he'd met Xavier. Scott was open -- ridiculously open -- about everything that ultimately didn't matter. He was friendly to them all, beyond the 'happy field commander, happy troops' thing, but he hid everything about himself that Piotr imagined you'd know about a friend. His past, his beliefs -- in Xavier's Dream, at the very least, his fears, his hopes...

Piotr thought -- or at least told himself -- that Scott would accept what he'd done, that he'd be patient and try to understand how the skepticism that so frustrated him in Alex wasn't isolated and had in fact infected another. Scott wasn't rash and if he was impulsive, he also possessed the self-restraint not to act on those impulses. Ororo would fly into a lightning-sparked rage, but Scott would simmer, waiting to see what was happening so he could formulate the appropriate response.

Wanda pushed off the counter she'd been leaning against, drawing Piotr's attention outward. She looked at her watch and carefully took off her own plastic cap. Pietro had plugged a small desk lamp in on the countertop area Piotr supposed was for women to apply their makeup away from the sinks. Wanda turned it on and aimed it so that she could examine her hair.

"Yours should be more than ready," she told her brother, who was back to sitting in the matron's chair. Pietro got up, making a sour face, and went into one of the empty stalls. Wanda, by the sink, unraveled a shower nozzle and hose of the sort that Piotr was used to seeing in Russia. Before attaching it, Wanda hung another piece of metal sheeting, attached to a wire loop, to the faucet. She attached the nozzle and kinked the hose, then let the small piece of corrugated aluminum fall down behind it, activating the motion sensor. She picked up a towel and went into the stall where Pietro was waiting.

The twins... disturbed him. He'd expected two individuals capable of such evil as they had effected would be different. Marked, the way some of the mafiya he'd known over the years had been, with some set of characteristics that by themselves meant nothing but put together signified something dangerous and _unwell_. But Wanda and Pietro, in his thus-far limited interaction with them, did not give off an aura of instability. They possessed their father's intensity, but it did not blaze brilliantly the way it had for Magneto; it was a quieter fire, one he suspected was no less intense. And yet it was still fervor and not fever, passion and not the overripe sweetness of decay that he associated with sociopathy.

He heard the sound of water running into the toilet and leaned over to look in. Pietro was bent over the toilet, the way a vomiting person would be, his hands on the rim and his head down as Wanda was rinsing out his now-brown hair. His eyes were closed, but they opened again when Wanda kinked the hose once more and dropped the towel on to the back of his head. Pietro rubbed his scalp furiously before standing up slowly and Wanda pressed herself up against the toilet paper dispenser so that he could pass by.

"Next," he said as he passed by Piotr.

Piotr knew he had a dubious expression on his face. The stall was narrow and he was not and even by himself, it would have been a close (although not claustrophobic) fit. Wanda sighed impatiently. "Kneel," she ordered, not unkindly.

He did, noting once again the extra roominess (and stiffness) of the new jeans, and Wanda peeled off the plastic cap one-handed. The water -- cool, but too warm to be refreshing -- started and he felt its gentle pressure against his scalp. Wanda shifted so that her thigh was resting against his shoulder and upper arm, a gentle pressure that increased once she was sure he was compensating for his weight. Even were he straight and even if Wanda didn't know that he wasn't, there was nothing intimate about the proximity. Leaning over, she could reach the far side of his head, carding her fingers through his short hair and rubbing at a spot behind his right ear. She pushed his head down gently, getting him to tip further forward, but he could not do so without either raising his haunches and dislodging her or putting his face uncomfortably close to the rim of the toilet. She ended up cupping water over the spots she could not safely reach with the shower nozzle and he was surprised when a towel was dropped on his head. He waited for her to move back and kink the hose again before reaching up to touch the towel.

Pietro was standing, hair dry, right outside the stall when he backed out. Piotr moved past him and over to the mirror, careful not to bump the hose, and could hear the twins bicker quietly about how to best wash Wanda's hair out without dangling her curls into the toilet water. In the fluorescent light of the washroom, his hair didn't look different. The brown was dark enough that it was not at odds with his eyebrows and matched well with the dark circles under his eyes. Darker hair than Scott's, but lighter than Logan's. He turned away, rubbing his hair dry. He was done by the time Wanda emerged from the stall with her hair wrapped up in a towel turban.

The rest of the process was completed in silence. Wanda handed him an olive colored J Crew henley and took the navy shirt he'd been wearing and put it in the duffel that held the wet towels. Pietro collected all of the boxes, bags, and other detritus from the hair dying and put them, too, in the bag. As Piotr dug his wallet and change out of his old jeans and Wanda changed, Pietro sped around behind her, wiping down every surface with the matron's own bottle of cleaner and paper towels. He took Piotr's black jeans and Wanda's clothes and stuffed them into the now-crammed duffel, too.

"Give me your passport," Pietro demanded, holding out his free hand. "And any identifying cards in your wallet."

Piotr paused. His passport was fake, but it was a legitimate fake --the physical item was the real thing -- and it, along with his similarly manufactured green card, was the only thing that would keep him from deportation back to Russia should something go wrong. At the best -- Piotr wasn't sure what either Great Britain or even the US did to illegal immigrants with criminal ties and a defaulted membership in a probably illegal mutant militia. Hair dye or not, flight from the X-Men or not, up until this moment he could walk away from the twins. Without his passport and green card, there was no turning back.

He looked at Pietro, who was watching him with much less than the expected impatience, as if he understood the significance of the juncture. Slowly, Piotr bent down to his bag and retrieved his travel documents. His wallet was simple -- the I-551 "green card", the Xavier-provided credit card, and his school identity card. He handed them over and Pietro nodded.

Wanda pulled out her makeup bag again, but did not re-apply the dark red lipstick that she had been wearing. Instead, she started applying a loud blue eyeshadow, followed by dabs of a foundation that was slightly too pale for her light olive complexion. She finished off with a bright pink lipstick, rubbing her lips together and then turning to Piotr and Pietro and smiling brightly.

"How d'y'all think I look?" she drawled, winking at Piotr. Next to him, Pietro snorted and looked in the mirror behind her, fixing the part in his hair.

Piotr picked up his bag after Wanda collected her things and Pietro shouldered his own bag before picking up the duffel. They looked around, although Piotr was quite sure he had no professional eye for noticing things were amiss. Wanda moved to the door, pulling the chair out of the way. She unlocked it and, cocking her head to listen for noises on the other side, opened it quickly. She pulled off the maintenance sign and looked around, waiting a moment before indicating that Piotr and Pietro should follow. They went down the short empty hallway, through a set of double doors that had a lock on the other side, and then on to the concourse. It was still dark outside the terminal windows, but the concourse was getting busy with early-morning commuters and bleary business-types filling the waiting areas.

Piotr allowed Wanda to take his arm by the elbow and drag him down the hallway. There was a bounce to her step, an eagerness that hadn't been there before and seemed unsettlingly unnatural considering all that had come before. And that it was now nearly dawn and he'd barely slept and, once the adrenaline rush from his fear wore off, he doubted he'd have the energy to fake looking anything other than tired and more than a little paranoid.

"Oh, Slava, isn't this _wonderful_?" she cooed in her Texas voice, turning to look up at him with a bright smile that looked terribly at odd with the cynical eyes. "This is goin' ta be so much _fun_."

Slava. Viacheslav. A good, solid Russian name, obviously now his for a duration to be determined. Perhaps permanently. He couldn't very well go around as Piotr Nikoleivich Rasputin and expect Professor Xavier not to track him down.

"You're going the wrong way, Wendy," Pietro growled in Texas-flavored frustration as he materialized in the corner of Piotr's peripheral vision. He wore glasses now and a faded Dallas Cowboys t-shirt and while he still looked put-upon, there was less impatience in the expression. He was not carrying the duffel bag anymore and Piotr wondered where it had been stowed -- destroyed, more likely. The artifacts of the life of Piotr Rasputin, X-Man, were gone.

Pietro gestured with his now-free left hand. "Exit's that way. Unless you _want_ to go through Customs again."

She sighed dramatically and pulled Piotr in the direction Pietro was now leading them in. He followed dumbly, not trusting himself either to say anything -- was he supposed to have an accent? -- or to otherwise contribute. And so he stumbled along, guided by Wanda's deceptively casual grip on his elbow, as they made their way to the entrance to the Underground station. Pietro let out a muttered stream of curses when he realized that he'd have to pay for the tickets and he stood off to the side as he counted out the coin money and double-checked the paper bills.

After going through the queue, Pietro handed him and Wanda each a four-day travel pass and shrugged his bag back onto his shoulder, setting off for the turnstiles. It took a moment to figure out how they worked and whether he'd need to go through sideways, but they were soon waiting for the Heathrow Express. The London rush hour was underway by the time the train got to King's Cross.

There was another false trail laid down at the BritRail station connected to the tube. Pietro handed off the pre-paid tickets to some gracious parents trying to corral a small passel of children in matching Arsenal jerseys while Wanda purchased three tickets to Aberdeen. Piotr was left by a pillar and told to hold everyone's bags.

"Do I get to know where we're really going?" he asked after Pietro rejoined him and took back his backpack. Still not quite awake and very much feeling the lack of solid sleep, Piotr was still feeling a half-step behind the rest of the world, which had to be at least five steps behind the Lehnsherr twins. "And... does Slava have an accent?"

Pietro had frowned at the first question, but the dour look softened. "We weren't sure you'd be able to fake it, so you're not required to pass as anything but what you are," he said, the words innocuous enough but conveying pretty much what Pietro must think Piotr _was_.

Wanda returned ten minutes later, the tickets in her hand and the wallet presumably in her bag. "We have two hours," she said. "Should we walk?"

Pietro stopped at a newspaper kiosk and bought more chocolate -- he had apparently eaten the already-purchased ones on the way in from Heathrow -- and they left the building, walking swimming against a sea of commuters and avoiding the taxis swerving in and out of the queue. Piotr looked around nervously; they weren't that far from the hotel.

"Relax," Wanda said as she sidled up next to him. "Nobody will be looking for the American tourists and it's still too early for Uncle Charles or his strumpet to be scanning the city for you."

Wanda and Pietro were in full tourist mode, calling to each other in their Texas twangs, pointing out double-decker buses and wasn't it so kewl that everyone drove on the wrong side of the road. Wanda --Wendy, really, with no trace of the sleek, urbane terrorist about her -- had produced a camera and was taking pictures, periodically asking "Slava" to take one of her and Pietro, whom she addressed as "Pete". Piotr noticed after the second time that the camera had no film in it.

He knew roughly where they were -- he'd gone with Ororo to Covent Garden during one of their afternoon breaks -- and regretted once again that he'd had so little time to visit the sites during his time in London. Through Trafalgar Square and the British Museum that he'd only managed three hours in one morning before a book signing across the street, on to Whitehall where the pedestrian traffic took on a less casual air so close to Downing Street and the government and Parliament buildings. The twins kept them on main roads and at busy intersections, the better to hide from telepaths as well as to remain unremarkable in the eyes of anyone else who happened to see them. Back at the hotel, Bobby might have noticed his absence by now, but it was unlikely --even if by some miracle Bobby had gotten up on his own before the alarm, he was aware of Piotr's occasional overnight absences and was remarkably mature about what they signified.

It had taken them less than an hour to get to the Westminster Bridge. All along Whitehall, Wendy and Pete had grown more quiet and less obviously touristy so that by the time Piotr could look down on the dirty red ferries docked in the ugly green-yellow Thames, he was fairly sure he was walking with Wanda and Pietro again. Once past the Aquarium on the other bank, the three picked up their pace. Piotr knew where they were going now -- to Waterloo station. It would have been a few minutes on the tube, but it also would have been traceable.

They stopped at a Le Croissant Shop across the street and got coffee and pastries. Piotr hadn't realized how _much_ Pietro ate, although he supposed it made sense considering Pietro had used his speed a few times already that day. There was a stoop in front of a boutique not yet open and Wanda indicated that they should rest there.

"Here," she said, putting down her coffee on the step next to her and reaching into her bag. She pulled out a travel envelope, the sort of nylon-and-vinyl portfolio with zippers that tourists were encouraged to carry to keep their documents and currency safe and organized, and handed it to him.

He put down his own coffee and accepted it. There was a passport in the main zippered compartment. Viacheslav Semenkov, native of Chelyabinsk and an American citizen as of a decade ago. Chelyabinsk, known as Tankograd for its production of of Katyusha rockets and T-34 tanks. Nowadays it was mostly raw materials metals, especially steel (appropriate and probably intentionally chosen, knowing the twins' love of irony). About a thousand kilometers from Moscow, he'd guess, which still made it much closer to the capital than to Irkutsk, the biggest city near his own Ust-Ordynski. The passport photo was carefully done, a doctored photo that didn't quite look like him, but was close enough to fall within the scope of Bad Passport Photos and not raise any suspicion. It looked much more like his brother Mikhail than like him and Piotr wondered if in fact they'd used a picture of the long-missing Misha.

"Memorize the information," Wanda told him, gesturing with the bit of muffin in her hand toward a typewritten sheet in his hands. "It doesn't travel with us."

"Where are we traveling?" Piotr asked automatically as he pulled the page out of the pile by its exposed edge. It was a list of the particulars of the life of Slava Semenkov: his birthday (24 April), his address (Forest Hills, Queens, a moderately sized Russian community), his occupation (in-house artist for a direct mail agency; a list of his recent projects and a website), his education (Queens College, Class of 2001, BFA), his family (mother dead, father retired, two younger sisters Katya and Stacy). There were random facts -- his last school in Chelyabinsk, his first girlfriend's name, where he went for drinks after work with the guys. Slava was a registered Democrat and had failed the two times he'd taken the road test to get his driver's license. There was an envelope taped to the bottom with cards for his wallet -- Social Security card, credit card, New York State Identification Card, Queens College student ID with Spring '01 on the sticker, Blockbuster video card, Duane Reade shopper's card, and a business card from a dentist saying his next appointment was in three weeks.

"France," Wanda replied as Pietro loudly sucked the last of his orange juice through his straw. "Lille."

Piotr made a noncommittal noise; France made sense -- it was close and it was hard for telepaths to see into, especially without a tool like Cerebro, but he knew nothing of their destination. He took out his wallet and put away the new cards into his oddly empty wallet, removing his own Duane Reade card (he'd forgotten to take it out before) and crumpled it into pieces. He wasn't as strong as he was in his steel form, but he could still break a plastic credit card easily.

"What's in Lille?" he asked as Wanda fastidiously wiped crumbs from her lap. Pietro was eating another of his sandwiches. "Besides it being in France?"

Xavier and Jean had been antsy about France, Jean much more so than the Professor. The ground minerals in the northern part of the country were natural psi-shields; Paris itself was psionically silent under ground. From without, it was an effect not unlike a television with no antenna (so Xavier had explained to the rest of them) -- you could tell it was on, but you could get no clear signal except in extraordinary cases. Magneto's first helmet had been built in Paris, Xavier had told them. Piotr wondered if the twins had anything more than Xavier's word on whether France was truly psionically shielded --it could be as much a lie as that their father was dead.

"Shopping, sightseeing," Wanda answered with a wave of her hand and a sly grin. "It's close enough to Belgium and England and France. Lots of stores, lots of clubs, lots of students."

"It's a city full of people like us," Pietro added as he stood up. Waterloo Station had a lot of commuter traffic and while it was tailing off, the street itself was still too busy to comfortably watch others. He stood in front of where Piotr and Wanda sat, his body blocking the view to and from the station entrance across the street. "Young, beautiful, _x-positive_."

Piotr looked up sharply. He knew that there were mutant enclaves around the world; many of them were populated by American expatriots who had either survived the Sentinel hunts or had managed to flee before they'd been identified for termination. (Mostly the former; many mutants -- especially the assimilated, closeted ones -- had not thought the government would go as far as it did and had been unprepared for the first bloody wave.) It stood to reason that the European mutant community would be active and more prepared, but Piotr had nonetheless always imagined something closer to the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia and not some trendy pan-European hotspot.

"You'll like it," Wanda assured him as she stood up. "We should be there long enough for you to enjoy it."

Piotr followed her lead and stood up as well, stuffing his spare napkins and empty coffee cup with the shards of plastic rattling around inside into the blue and white paper bag. They moved seamlessly against the commuters streaming out the doors, flashes of Wendy and Pete appearing as they looked around for the schedule of trains.

The trip itself was uneventful and Piotr slept almost all of the way, only waking up when the conductor came through for tickets; he'd wanted to see if the cliffs of Dover were really white and he'd wanted to see the Chunnel itself, but the coffee had done little to stave off his exhaustion and he'd passed out before the train had cleared the commuter train stations to the south of London. He awoke groggy and tense as the PA announced that Lille would be coming up in a few minutes, his legs stiff and with a moderate need to find a restroom.

The station was new and modern and, as they were all the way at the end of the platform, it felt like the far end was already in Belgium. They descended the stairs and followed the signs for the exit; once outside, they were in front of a giant mall and across the street from the entrance to a park and looking up at a giant building that could only be described as boot-shaped.

Piotr wanted to take a moment to get his bearings, to look around, but he and Wanda had to jog to keep up with Pietro, who was moving with unconscious speed; three times he turned around as they walked up Avenue Le Corbusier and Piotr could see the surprise melt into frustration as he realized how far ahead he was.

He had never been to France, never been to the European continent at all, really, never gotten to see the cradle of Western culture and the inheritors of a society that Russia alternately envied and spurned. He'd been to the Arlanda airport in Stockholm on a layover between Moscow and New York, but his only travels had been on business -- to Moscow and then New York for the Mafiya, and then wherever the X-Men had taken him either in the wake or the forefront of disaster: Tokyo (getting 'vamped' by Rogue), Finland (Weapon X), Colorado (the debacle with Rusty), Washington (the showdown with Magneto). The twins had promised that Lille would be a relaxing wait, a pleasant layover between now and whatever awaited him in his future, but Piotr was under no illusion that this would be any more of a vacation than his earlier travels. The twins were no more concerned for his welfare than Valeri or, ultimately, Xavier. And that knowledge kept him from properly appreciating the shops and sights they were hurrying past.

Years ago, he'd been happy to leave Ust-Ordynski (or, rather, he'd been willing to find a bright spot in leaving his life and family in Ust-Ordynski) because he'd be getting the chance for new experiences. He'd foolishly believed back then that his job for Valeri (and then for Boris) would be just that -- a job and not a life, certainly not a life that trapped him and stained him with its sticky darkness like so much tar. He'd been naive, painfully naive and innocent not so much in that he'd not realized he was associating with bad men -- he'd known that all along -- but in that he'd sadly misjudged his own strength to withstand their influence. He had kissed his mother goodbye and thought he was going off to an indentured servitude of low-level racketeering and extortion and probably some vandalism and theft. What he hadn't expected was how very small the steps were from extortion to assault, from assault to murder.

Piotr had not traveled, but he _had_ seen pictures and knew his history; Lille looked a fair bit like a displaced Belgian town, a remnant of a time when the borders between the French Bourbons and the Spanish Habsburgs were other than what they were. There were plazas and the sort of three-storied buildings comprised of residences over commercial concerns that he'd seen in illustrations and animated versions of fairy tales and that he'd always mentally pictured as being what an old town should look like. The boulevard they were on was broad and populated, but the side streets varied in breadth and frequency and angle, peeling off in sharp angles and gentle curves.

It was eleven in the morning, local time and the outdoor cafes were all full of late breakfasters, despite the cool weather. More than once the explosion of laughter of young women gathered over tall, thin coffee glasses startled him from his reveries. Pietro hadn't been facetious; the city did seem to be made up mostly of people their own age.

Pietro was leaning against the wall of a church when Piotr and Wanda arrived, his backpack hanging loosely from his hand and irritation writ large across his face. St. Maurice, the sign said, and there was a plaque with what Piotr assumed was the building's history, but he didn't have time to read it as Pietro shoved himself off the wall with his foot and crossed the street. Wanda muttered with annoyance as she chased after him.

Rue de Paris was nothing like what Piotr imagined the city from which it took its name was like except in its big city grime, although the buildings were in better state of cleanliness. They walked south for what Piotr felt was almost as long as their walk west from the station until Pietro suddenly crossed the street and paused in front of an imposing doorway.

L'Hermitage Gantois looked like a converted monastary, Piotr thought, or some sort of old merchant's estate. The walls were thick and solid and, despite having been painted a pleasant neutral sand and regularly interrupted by large windows, looked impregnable. They had rooms booked, three separate ones to Piotr's surprise. His surprise faded as they climbed up the stairs and followed the hallways -- the rooms were tiny, even by the Moscow standards Piotr had gotten used to.

"Dump your things," Wanda told him as she stood in his doorway. "Take a shower, crash, whatever. We'll head out in a couple of hours for lunch."

Piotr nodded and Wanda reached out to close the door to his room and he heard the lock click, imagining that it was a lock from the outside and not the inside. He needed to sleep more than he wanted to at this point; he'd been up for almost thirty hours with only a couple of naps in between and yet he was alert, almost hyperly so. He felt wired and tense and restless and worried that he was too exhausted sleep. But he did.

Three hours later, there was a brisk knock on his door. Piotr groaned aloud as he stirred, sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed. He padded barefoot to the floor and opened the door to find Wanda, who looked him over with frank admiration and, to his dismay, a little bit of appetite. He frowned as he turned away from her gaze and back toward his bed. He'd pulled a shirt out earlier, laid it out before he'd gone off to shower, and not put it on when he'd returned to his bed to sleep. He pulled it over his head now and turned back to face Wanda, who smiled placidly at him.

"Pietro's waiting downstairs," she said as she sat down on the ledge by the window. Piotr nodded as he put on his socks and reached for his shoes. "He's probably at least at the Place de la République by now."

If Pietro had wandered off, he had returned as he was waiting for them when they stepped outside. They walked north, toward the city center. The town had not quieted into the mid-afternoon lull Piotr had expected; the restaurants they passed were still crowded. Pietro had been leading them, as usual, but when he turned to go down a side street, Wanda had called after him and he'd come back dutifully and without comment and they'd continued on, turning down another street and heading west. They finally arrived at one of the pedestrian-only paths, snaking around past the neatly fenced outdoor seating for restaurants and a couple of stalls selling flowers until they came to a place with a red awning. Wanda clapped her hands and rubbed them together eagerly.

"Best mussels in the country," she confided as they stepped inside. The interior was cheery and unpretentious and very brightly lit, red walls behind numerous picture frames and red tablecloths under yellow paper covers. A few of the tables were still occupied and the host brought them to one a few tables over from a pair of young men talking animatedly in French about a soccer game.

The place was also a brewery; Pietro asked him what sort of beer he preferred, then ordered for them when Piotr had answered. Wanda sipped her white beer and he and Pietro their brown as they waited for their food.

"May I ask what we're doing yet?" Piotr began, putting his glass down gently. He looked over at Pietro, who in turn looked at Wanda. "I have come, I have left everything in my life behind me, even though I don't know why you have sought me out. I don't think there's anything I can do that you couldn't get someone else to do better or with less effort than what it took to bring me here."

Pietro's eyes narrowed for a moment, then his features smoothed out and he smiled as if he were discussing a day trip to Calais. "You can think, Rasputin. You are still capable of independent thought and that's a far rarer trait than you can imagine, especially among the mutant community." He sipped his beer slowly, savoring it as it went down. Pietro did not always live his life at a hummingbird's pace. "We are all fantastically powered beings, but what biology has given our bodies, it seems to have taken from our minds. We can fly, read minds, control mystical energies... but we are all so small, so tiny, so scared. And we have our _leaders_ to thank for that -- Xavier, Father... fostering a persecution complex when there were so many better options, so many more _worthy_ options. How are we supposed to master the universe when we cannot master ourselves?"

"It wasn't your father or Xavier who created the Sentinels," Piotr interjected, surprised by the bitterness of Pietro's words. He knew the twins disapproved of Xavier and his methods, but there was a deeper, broader frustration at play here.

They were sitting at right angles, each able to see around the restaurant. There was nobody close enough to overhear, not with the boisterous soccer fans and the low-playing music and the occasional noise from the kitchen.

"But it was they who chose not to fight them," Wanda replied. She traced the end of her piece of bread in the dish of olive oil. "You saw the files, didn't you? Father could have eradicated the Sentinel factories, destroyed the program singlehandedly. _Uncle Charles_ could have used his obsession with public approbation to get mutants some good PR. That article on genescanning technology and all of his unpublished notes on genemasking? He could have saved a lot more mutants from the Sentinels than he did. But he only wanted you few, you select and precious few. The pretty and the malleable, although he certainly didn't plan it nearly as well as he'd thought. He could have turned the school into a haven, but he wanted martyrs. It made the cause look better."

"We chose you because you are _not_ malleable," Pietro continued. "You haven't been programmed like the One-Eyed Wunderkind and Xavier hasn't re-wired your head out of what I can only assume is pure hubris. Were I him, you would have been the _first_ I would have lobotomized."

Piotr looked sharply up; he had been absently watching the couple across the restaurant go through their bowl of mussels.

Wanda grinned apologetically at him. "You didn't think Scott was the first or the only, did you?" A delicate flip of her hair, the now-brown curls having been restored to their former fullness after a day bound in elastics. "Uncle Charles is not that principled."

"Wh--"

"We don't know who or how," she cut him off with a shrug that seemed too casual for what she was saying. "We have our _guesses_, of course. None of you were unknown to us before Charles recruited you. Certain patterns of behavior..."

He felt gut-punched and let his hand fall away from his glass. "Ororo."

The twins exchanged a look of satisfaction. Piotr felt nauseated.

"We'd tried for years with her," Wanda continued after the waiter passed by carrying one of the beer samplers. "Too wild, too mistrustful, too scared of her own powers to ever be tamed and there was nothing we could offer her that would be worth sacrificing her freedom for. Even Father gave up and he was persistent to a fault and beyond. But then that _mindwhore_ got her out of jail -- tempted her with freedom -- and brought her to Charles... Why did she stay, Piotr? Where did her fire go? What could possibly have been offered that was worth giving up a life without responsibility or regret?"

Piotr closed his eyes. He remembered Ororo as he'd first met her, skeptical of any deal where it looked like they were getting something for nothing. Her perfect life was a convertible down a sunny highway and a bag of McDonalds in the seat next to her. But that Ororo was harder to remember than she'd used to be. It was almost as if she had been domesticated, like a pet. When he'd left her, she'd been passionate about the mutant cause, devoted to Henry, and indignant at any outsider's accusations of the Professor. He'd asked Scott once if he'd noticed a change, but Scott had shrugged and said that he hadn't known any of them very well at the beginning and that he'd been too busy trying to be field commander to be any sort of friend.

"Maybe it's legitimate," Wanda admitted. "Maybe she has truly found religion and taken that whole 'post-human rebaptism' thing to heart. Maybe Uncle Charles simply sounded like a better teacher than Father when it came to learning about her powers..."

"Because a telepath knows _so_ much more about mastering forces of nature than a man who controls magnetism," Pietro snorted, taking a long swallow of beer.

"I'm sure Uncle Charles made it sound like it was all about her," Wanda said, looking pointedly at her brother. "Just as I'm sure Father spoke of using mutant powers to reign in and leash homo sapiens. Rhetoric was not his strong point; he never thought that the average mutant would prefer a selling point that didn't involve global domination."

"He was looking to dominate the globe," Pietro retorted. "There is something to be said for truth in advertising."

"Charles wants to take over the world, too," Wanda bit back. "But look who he ended up with to help him achieve it and look who _we_ are stuck shepherding into the new age."

"We're working toward a different end," Pietro hissed, then swallowed whatever else he had to say. The waiter was approaching, his arms laden with their food.

Lunch itself was quiet and mercifully devoid of any further revelations. Piotr was quiet, using the generous portions and his hunger as an excuse for his failing to keep up any sort of real conversation. The food was good, very good, but he couldn't properly appreciate it with the lingering sourness of the confirmation of his suspicions about Xavier -- and he had no doubt that the twins had very good reasons to suspect the Professor of influencing Ororo -- still in his mouth. Wanda had no such trouble, however, and she expressed her delight in her food with low moans of happiness and insistent forkfuls held before her brother's and Piotr's lips.

They finished with the house's special dessert, an obvious giveaway that someone in the kitchen was from North Africa. Pietro paid by credit card, left a healthy cash tip, and they made their way back into the late afternoon sunshine. Wanda looked at her watch as they put on their sunglasses.

"Nine?"

He nodded and walked off in the opposite direction from the one in which they had come. Piotr looked down at Wanda questioningly.

"We can't let the family business go to seed while we're showing you a good time," she replied, taking his arm by the elbow and leading him up the pedestrian walk.

"So he's gone off to be a terrorist?" Piotr made a face, although it was more at irritation with himself than with wherever in the world Pietro had gone off to do. He'd forgotten. He'd forgotten what the twins were, who they were, and what they did.

"Don't sound indignant," Wanda told him lightly, pulling at his elbow as he'd stopped short. "Save your holier-than-thou routine for someone who never saw the police photographs of Juri Andreykov."

Piotr couldn't be surprised that Wanda knew of Andreykov, a small-time bath-and-tile man who'd run up a $200,000 debt with Boris and then been unwilling to give over half the store as payment. Boris's bosses had wanted the place to launder cash and Andreykov could have gone on selling brass faucets and frosted glass shower doors, but he'd balked and Piotr had been one of the three sent over to convince him to change his mind. He hadn't landed the fatal blow, but he'd landed enough and he'd not stopped Mike from those final kicks when it was clear that no further gain could be made. Andreykov had died the next morning and his widow had given Boris the store outright.

"I am not proud of what I've done," he said quietly, letting Wanda pull him along.

"But you never quit doing it, either," she replied, looping her arm around his elbow. "You got promoted up from thug to whatever it was they called you. Dealmaker. Mule. You were never a conscientious objector."

There was no reply, no convincing reply, he could make to that statement of fact, so he didn't. They were nearing the end of the pedestrian path and Piotr could see a red Citroen idling at the curb. There was very little traffic in the city, he'd noticed.

"Don't think that we enjoy this," Wanda said in a quiet voice as they emerged on to the boulevard. The tone was gentle and yet not, an invisible steel beneath a tone that seemingly carried no anger. "Don't think we get our jollies by picking targets that will splatter the guts of flatline children all over the streets. It doesn't work like that. We're not our father. But we can't stand by and let them hunt us down and kill us like dogs. What did Charles do when the Sentinel program was announced? What did he do when they first took to the skies? What did the UN do? The ACLU? Nobody did anything. They left the families to bury the dead. Alone."

The last word hung in the air, suspended by Wanda's now-naked fury, and Piotr looked at her, really looked at her. There was an earnestness in her face, something beyond the righteous anger he'd gotten glimpses of before. This was no jihad to them, no Crusade. This wasn't about wiping out the infidel or evening the odds that stood against a mutant population that had no positive representation beyond whatever face Charles Xavier chose to put forth -- and Xavier himself had been a less than steady ally.

Piotr remembered the fear and outrage he'd felt when the Sentinels had first been proposed. He remembered the jokes the others had made, sitting around in dusky bars with bottles of ice-cold vodka and watching the Russian-language cable channel. America, the land of the free and the winner of the Cold War, and they were turning into Stalin's paradise. He'd laughed at the jokes because he'd had to, but he'd wondered where he could run to if he had to do that, too. But he hadn't run, not even after the Sentinels came to New York City, figuring that his own death by a Sentinel was better for his family than his running away from Boris.

"They buried them in ditches," Wanda went on as she pulled him over to look in a shop window. It was a couture house and there were dresses in the window that only the most perfect of women could wear with any style. Wanda would look stunning in any of them. "The bodies nobody would claim. Father sent us to exhume them, give them proper burials befitting martyrs. We'd find an arm, maybe, a sack of pulped flesh and bone, a head. The families would usually be long gone, off to try to find a new life in a place where nobody knew that the'd once called a mutant 'mom' or 'dad' or 'sister' or 'brother'."

Wanda turned away from the window and looked up at him, her intense eyes burning. "Someone has to stop them, Piotr. Someone has to speak for the dead."

With that, the fire in her eyes was extinguished and her smile went from bitter to pleased. "Now," she said in Wendy's slow twang, "I want to try a few of these puppies on."

* * *

It was a quarter past nine when Wanda led him past the bouncers waiting in the foyer to the club on Rue Royale. The old-world heft of the exterior stopped inside the large wooden double doors, giving way to a sleeker --and to Piotr's mind, more sterile -- Eurostyle smoothness. The club had been a converted merchant's villa and was built to withstand time, tide, and bread riots; the techno music blaring in the main hall was all but inaudible from outdoors.

The bouncers -- the taller of whom was still a couple of inches shorter than Piotr -- looked them over carefully as they passed. If they were supposed to have stopped for some sort of cursory inspection, they hadn't and the pair didn't object as Wanda tugged him by the hand through the small crowd milling around by the coat-check.

The music was very loud, but not uncomfortably so. Loud enough to get lost in, but not enough that you couldn't hear the person next to you, the best sort of volume for someone looking to hook up, Piotr reflected. Not that that was his intention here, despite the decidedly pretty aspect of the faces he passed and the vague-yet-unmistakable feeling of anticipation and lust that flowed through the room. The DJ on stage was young and American-looking with his shaggy blonde hair and open features, the oversized headphones making him look intent and not foolish and he swayed slightly, eyes closed, to a beat counterpoint to the one he was creating for the crowd. There was a singer next to him, her features not clear in the flashing lights, and she was singing in some mélange of French and English and sounds that were not words in any language Piotr had ever heard.

Wanda was dragging him along the back wall, slipping through the dancers to their right and the ones standing and drinking and chatting on their left. She was lithe and graceful and found seams and pockets in the crowded space, but if she sailed like a ship through the sea of humanity, Piotr felt that she pulled him after her like an unwieldy anchor. He felt especially clumsy, muttering "désol" as he stumbled along slightly crouched so that his arm was not jerked out of its socket by Wanda's iron grip.

They passed through an opening and suddenly the sterile sleekness was gone again, the stone vault of the roof and the quiet plaster and dark-stained wood walls only echoed with the music. Wanda led him on, letting his hand go without looking behind her, toward what was still the house's kitchen. A different sort of cacophony was there, the bang and crash of pots and pans and the shouts of a well-organized kitchen staff in a country that took cuisine very seriously. It was brightly lit compared to the dim hallway and Piotr found himself watching what he could see over Wanda's head, which was really only a sous chef supervising a quartet of giant steel stockpots. He was surprised when Wanda stopped suddenly and he nearly tripped over her.

They were in front of another of the wood-and-wrought-iron doors, a smaller version of the massive ones out front. Piotr watched as Wanda slid aside a false panel in the plasterwork in the door jamb, revealing a keypad. She typed in a code, although Piotr couldn't tell what it was with her body shielding her hand's movements, and then slid the panel back into place.

Nothing happened, but Wanda didn't seem concerned. She instead smoothed her skirt and fiddled with the delicate pins in her hair. After what seemed like forever but was perhaps only two minutes, the door swung open. Filling the door was a massive... mutant. There was no other explanation for the bull-like horns and broad, inhuman nose; Piotr half-expected cloven hooves for hands and thought vaguely of minotaurs in Greek mythology.

"Missa Lehnsherr," he greeted her with a nod, then flicked his eyes over to Piotr. "Herr Rasputin. You are expected."

The large man stepped aside and Wanda strode past, a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Piotr was following. Wanda didn't resemble either the sophisticated tourist from earlier today or her wide-eyed Texan alter ego; she was professionally cool with a slight air of impatience that was less kinetic than Pietro's occasional frustrated boredom with the world. She walked without hesitation and with entitlement down a short, dark hallway and then a flight of stairs going down. She descended almost regally, a slow pace that, once Piotr was down far enough, he realized was intended to survey the room.

The basement was large, about the size of the dance hall above, Piotr guessed. The back wall was lined with large booths, each booth containing a round table and couch-like seats and separated from its neighbor by glass partitions that went up to the ceiling. There was only a bar on the near wall, a long, dark wood bar that reflected the lighting above it. The sides had doorways and a waiter came out of one, a tray bearing plates of food held at head height.

"Bon soir," a woman in a plain black dress decorated only with a simple gold brooch greeted them with a slight bow as they reached the landing. "This way, please."

She led them to a booth that they hadn't been able to see into from the stairs. Pietro was there, sipping what looked to be a martini. A tall, handsome dark-haired man was sitting next to him, a short glass of clear liquid before him. Pietro's gaze shifted to them and the stranger followed his eyes, a flash of recognition shining in them before he stood up gracefully and bowed with restrained flourish at Wanda.

"My dear," he said in a low, smooth voice. Shoulder-length hair that looked elegant instead of immature, a few strands floating gently free from a pulled-back tail that emphasized his high cheekbones and Asian eyes... no, half-Asian, Piotr corrected. The man took Wanda's hand and escorted her to the side of the booth he'd just emerged from. Once Wanda was seated and shifting over toward where Pietro sat at the perigee of the broken circle, the stranger turned back to Piotr.

"Master Rasputin," he said coolly, looking him over with an almost proprietary expression. Piotr met his gaze impassively; he'd been sized up by too many men in his life to squirm. This one had the same airs as Valeri and Boris -- the assessing eye of someone used to buying and selling manpower -- but without the seediness.

The man -- who really couldn't have been much more than a few years older than Piotr himself -- suddenly smiled and gestured for him to sit down across from where he himself took a seat next to Wanda.

"My father buys excellent toys," the man said to Pietro with casual approval. "I'd say he'd miss this one, but I don't think he's paid close enough attention to the project to realize one is gone."

Piotr schooled his face to remain expressionless, but inside, he was irritated and confused. This man obviously knew who he was and where he was coming from, but was saying things that didn't make sense. Was he related to Xavier? Xavier would notice he was gone, unless he was being facetious...

"This is Shinobi Shaw, Piotr," Wanda explained as she took a sip from Pietro's martini. "He is a friend of ours, a friend of our cause."

Piotr inclined his head in silent greeting; Shinobi held up his glass in return salute before bringing it to his lips. The name meant nothing to Piotr; he remembered nobody named Shaw from any conversation with Xavier at the mansion.

A neatly dressed waiter appeared. "Mademoiselle? Monsieur? May I get you something to drink?" He handed them both short cards and then disappeared; they were wine lists, sorted by type, and the reverse held a list of spirits. There were no prices, although Piotr had no doubt that he would not be expected to pay. The waiter returned and Wanda asked for Viognier and Piotr Scotch. The waiter nodded and discreetly checked the contents of Pietro's and Shinobi's glasses before disappearing.

"How do you find Lille?" Shinobi asked, his voice not totally devoid of curiousity about the answer. "Pietro here hasn't forgiven them for World War Two, but I know Wanda enjoys it."

"A thousand Jews in one day, Shaw," Pietro said quietly, his voice flat and hard. "Welcoming the affluent mutants of today to spend their Euros and drink their beer doesn't make up for it."

"We went to the Bourse," Wanda cut in. "And we toured the old city. Piotr fondled the pretty books and wished he could take them home with him."

Shinobi smiled. "A bibliophile. You _are_ quite the bundle of surprises, aren't you?"

Whatever retort Piotr was considering died before passing his lips. The waiter returned with a tray, placing a large glass of white wine before Wanda and a generously filled snifter before him before setting out bowls of olives and almonds and two marble boards of cheeses that Piotr realized were tailored to their drinks.

This meeting was a test, of course. The twins had brought him before the man bankrolling them -- if not by himself, then at least the lynchpin of the confederation -- and, as such, Shinobi's inspection was another examination to pass, another hurdle to vault over. He'd given up the chance of returning to Xavier once he'd given Pietro his passport and let Wanda dye his hair, but here... The flight from London had been about giving up the present. This, now, was about the future. Including whether he'd have one. He hadn't spent so much time among the powerful and the aspiring-to-power to misunderstand the fact that his companions could make him disappear, erase all traces of Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin from the world forever. He was out from under Xavier's eye, but he was nowhere near safe.

"Forge is almost done with the devices," Pietro told his sister as he cut her a small piece off of the block of what looked to be Gruyere. It was a tension-breaker and Pietro did not pretend that it was otherwise. He placed the cheese on a pear wedge and handed it to her. "He wants to re-tool the delivery mechanism, but he always wants to retool. He'll have them ready."

"What did he make them out of?" Wanda asked after swallowing, dabbing her lips gently with a napkin. Piotr looked over at Shinobi, who was smiling in a way that made Piotr think that Pietro was telling a joke and Shinobi already knew the punch line.

"Beer cans, bubble gum, and cell phones, I think."

Wanda rolled her eyes and smiled, reaching for her wine glass. "We really should get him a bigger budget. New toys instead of having him refurbish old ones."

"Why?" Pietro asked, reaching for the knife next to another block of cheese. "He enjoys doing things this way. We gave him a Playstation and he turned it into something that let him sell DVDs of the goings-on in the women's locker room and _then_ he made himself an X-box out of a blender and Blob's old Discman. This keeps him out of trouble."

Piotr vaguely remembered Scott telling the team about some of the residents of the Savage Lands. The one who could rewire anything -- Forge, apparently -- was one Scott had very much wished to bring back to the team. It suddenly came to him -- would Xavier replace _him_? Would he explain the absence of Colossus to the media or just dismiss the questions that would be asked? Would he lie or plead ignorance? Piotr did not think he would tell the truth.

"Have you given any thought to joining the Brotherhood?" Shinobi asked benignly.

In his limited experience at job interviews -- and this was, at its root, a job interview -- he had never quite figured out where the line fell between saying what his prospective employer wanted to hear and saying what he actually thought. There was also the unspoken conversation, what sort of image he projected and what someone like Shinobi or Xavier or Boris or Valeri could see without words. If Shinobi was any sort of psi, it was doubly so. He could only imagine what sort of image he'd presented to Xavier.

"Wanda thinks most highly of your... experience and training."

There was a muttered comment from Pietro and Wanda hit him not-so-gently on the forearm with the back of her hand, although her eyes sparkled with humor.

He'd lied in his previous job interviews, not to his prospective employers, but to himself. He'd told himself, both in Valeri's seedy club back in Irkutsk and Xavier's posh study in Salem Center that there had been nowhere else to go, no place left to turn, that this was the best opportunity he was going to get. Of course, there _had_ been other choices -- not great choices, not even good ones, but they had existed. He knew they existed now. He could get up, leave, and wander out into the night. He didn't think Wanda and Pietro would go after him; they knew he wasn't going back to Xavier. He could build a life here in France as an illegal alien -- hell, there were thousands of them running around and he suspected the French merchants and businessmen would prefer a clean-cut Russian to an Arab. He could go around Europe and make his own way, staying out of sight of both Xavier and the government. Deportation back to Russia was bad, but not the end of all that was. Like Roskolnikov, he could go serve his time and wait for hope.

Or he could see where this led. He was no longer the naïf who left Irkutsk for Moscow on a midnight train. He had been a hero and a villain both since then and he knew now he had the power to change his environment, for good or for ill, in a greater way than breaking kneecaps or spouting platitudes on television. He'd changed his role before, but never willingly. It had always been a push and not a jump. And now, with Shinobi leading him down a trap-laden path, the twins watching to see where he fell, it was time to leap.

"I am not interested in killing," he answered calmly, sipping at his scotch. It was a very good single malt, Caol Ila, a name he'd seen but never thought to try because of the price.  
  
"Piotr is dubious of our intentions," Wanda said lightly, running a painted fingernail around the rim of her glass. "He doubts our motives."

"I don't doubt your motives," Piotr corrected. "I doubt your means."

Shinobi leaned back and smiled. "How would you go about it, then? What is your grand plan for the salvation and continuation of the mutant species? You are here because you reject Charles Xavier's pacifist appeasement and yet you reject a more active course. Surely you don't think that we can just proceed along current lines? Maintaining the status quo cost us forty thousand Americans during the Sentinel program alone. Throw in the mutie-bashing that never gets prosecuted, the aborted mutant children..."

"An eye-for-an-eye gets nothing accomplished while we are still one percent of the world's population," Piotr said, knowing he was paraphrasing Xavier and that the other three would know it, too. He'd broken with the Professor, but that didn't mean that he was discarding everything that he'd learned from him. Something about babies and bathwater. From the first time he'd recognized his own doubts about Xavier's dream, Piotr had tried to think positively in terms of what he'd do differently. But it was hard; he was not a strategist by nature and it was easier for him to analyze and break down rather than build up something new, to react instead of act. "I don't reject Xavier's ideas wholesale. I think some sort of détente has to be established."

"Détente," Pietro fairly spat. "Détente gets us nothing but crumbs."

"Why do we deserve anything greater?" Piotr asked, mind flashing back to Pietro's disgust with the city. "We are not the 'master race'. We are not entitled to anything simply because we are mutants."

"Aren't we?" Shinobi swirled the remnants of the liquid in his glass around before drinking. Out of the corner of his eye, Piotr saw that no sooner had he placed the glass down then the bartender across the room signaled with his arm. A moment later, a waiter appeared to retrieve the glass.

"Arrak," Shinobi told the young man, placing a hand over the wrist extended over the table to retrieve the glass. "I don't care about national pride; Pernod is for the timid."

The man nodded apologetically and disappeared.

"We are capable of talents and achievements that _homo sapiens_ can't even properly dream of," Shinobi went on. He popped a few of the toasted almonds into his mouth. "We can do _anything_."

"But we don't." Piotr leaned forward again. "Because underneath the mutations, we are all still human and make the same choices every other human being makes. We are motivated by greed, by fear, by anger, by lust."

"So that's your answer, then?" Shinobi moved his hands as the waiter returned with his drink and a plate of small triangles of toast surrounding bowls of caviar and crème fraise. Two tiny spoons, one mother-of-pearl and one metal, rested on the plate.

Shinobi gestured for Piotr to take first. He prepared the first piece for Wanda, who accepted it with a gracious smile, and then one for himself. He had had Caspian Sea caviar once before, in Moscow, and remembered the taste.

"That we are all human? Yes, that is my answer." Piotr took a sip of water before letting his hand return to the snifter of scotch. There was an electricity in his fingers, in his body. It was not from the food or liquor, but instead it was the heady feeling of implicit danger; he and Shinobi were very high up, fighting a battle with very high stakes that he was expected to lose.

"It is the answer of someone who has never made his own choices."

Piotr looked up and met Shinobi's gaze. There was no humor in them, no delight in the bait and banter. Shinobi -- and the twins -- considered him a philosophical unequal, a simpleton who did not understand how the world worked.

"We all make our own choices," he replied with a casualness he didn't feel. He sipped his scotch. "But the hardest choice is to live with what we have already decided."

"Ironic words coming out of the mouth of a man who has spent the last several years as someone else's soldier," Shinobi said, picking up his drink. "You are a very good soldier, Piotr. You trudge on, in the face of defeat, hoping against hope that this time it'll be different. Such faith... and yet such transferable faith. You are a mercenary. You have gone from operation to operation, you have come _here_, all without knowing the truth about any of it, just looking for a cause and then fighting for it."

Piotr made a noise to disagree -- more at the phrasing than the facts; he was more than aware of his own itinerancy -- but Shinobi waved his hand to dismiss it. The strong liquor he was drinking gave his face a flush, but there was no fever in his eyes.

"You don't fight for money," Shinobi went on. "You are too noble -- or too stupid, I haven't decided. But I don't know what you _are_ fighting for. What do you seek, Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin? What are you looking for? Truth, salvation, redemption, peace? You came away with these two," -- he gestured with his head toward Pietro and Wanda -- "and for what reason? You don't share their morality or their goals. And yet at the first proffered opportunity, you fled the cause you've spent the last few years repeatedly trying to sacrifice yourself to... for what?"

Piotr leaned back, letting the tip of his index finger caress the base of the snifter. He could tell them that he'd left because he couldn't take Professor Xavier's hypocrisy anymore. It was an easy answer and not, in fact, wholly incorrect. He couldn't tell them about Magneto, though. He _wouldn't_ tell them about how Magneto's survival as Erik Lehnsherr changed the picture for everyone, even them. It made the Professor something more sinister than merely duplicitous, made the twins and their crusade for vengeance less righteous than they thought it was, made Shinobi's role much less significant than anyone present would consider. Piotr knew he was a pawn, knew he was controlled on many levels that he couldn't even see and must only theorize their existence. But he knew of his ultimate powerlessness and the twins and Shinobi Shaw did not. They didn't realize that they were pawns, too. And that had to be his strength.

"I learned what I could from the Professor," he said slowly, looking at the way the light reflected off of the amber liquid in his glass. "Just as I learned from my... previous employers. I am tired of being a foot soldier. I no longer want to be cannon fodder in a war I do not understand. If I am to decide what to do with my life, then I want it to be an informed decision. If I am a player upon this world stage, then I want to join the right troupe."

He looked up then to Shinobi's face. The other man was watching him carefully, a broad smile slowly spreading across his face. "Oh, Wanda," Shinobi murmured. "I think we've got ourselves a live one."

A surprisingly girlish giggle from Wanda, who gave Piotr a slow wink when he looked over at her. "Do you still doubt my taste, Shinobi?" she asked as she brought a dried apricot to her lips.

"My dear," Shinobi replied, looking over at Wanda as he raised his glass. "Your taste, as with everything else, is exquisite."

Piotr kept his reaction to the obvious flirting to himself, but Pietro had no such compunction, pursing his lips sourly and cutting forcefully into the nearest wedge of cheese.

There was motion out of the corner of his eye and Piotr turned his head to follow it. The woman who had guided them to the table was approaching, a discreetly serious look upon her face.

"Messieurs et Madame," she began, dipping her head respectfully, "there is something it is thought you should see."

"The screening room?" Shinobi asked, all humor gone from his expression. The woman nodded once. "We'll be along presently."

The woman nodded again, bowed slightly, and left them.

"I wonder what's going on," Wanda mused aloud as she prepared another piece of toast with caviar, picked up her glass, and waited for Shinobi to rise. He, too, took his glass, so Piotr followed suit. Pietro chose to drain his martini glass and slid out of the booth behind Piotr empty handed.

They followed Shinobi, who sauntered with false casualness through one of the doors on the sides of the room. There was a short, dark hallway, a foyer really, and at the end a young man with unmistakably purple skin sat at a small maitre d' table illuminated by a single shaded lamp. He rose noiselessly as Shinobi entered the narrow circle of light thrown by the lamp.

"This way," he said. The darkness behind him parted and Piotr realized it was not a wall, but instead a heavy velvet curtain being drawn back by unknown hands. He had to duck slightly to pass through the folds.

The 'screening room' was just that, a room equal in size to the one they had just left, its walls covered with many large flat-paneled television monitors. They were all showing various scenes from what must be the dance floor upstairs, sometimes splitting one image between several monitors and sometimes showing discrete pictures. It was dizzying and hypnotizing both and Piotr was transfixed by the wall-sized image of an undulating young woman, head thrown back with her eyes closed and lips parted as her arms snaked sinuously above her in time to the muted music. Other hands appeared around her bare midriff and the one focus of the unseen cameras became two as her partner stayed close and their movements lost their syncopation and found their rhythm.

A hand on his elbow and a whisper in his ear. "Bet they didn't have _this_ at your boss' club down in Brighton Beach," Pietro murmured. "Look around."

Piotr did, with eyes newly adapted to the low light. Shinobi and Wanda were looking impatient as the purple-skinned man spoke into the ear of another uniformed young man. There were couches and chairs everywhere, every one oriented toward a wall of monitors. Many were occupied, especially by couples and groups, and Piotr turned sharply toward Pietro when he realized that many of the seated women wore the same uniform as the hostess in the other room had.

"Welcome to the Lille outpost of the Paris chapter of the Hellfire Club," Pietro explained with a wicked gleam in his eyes. "Where the young and powerful come to do whatever they damned please."

With that, he started to walk away, pulling Piotr's elbow until Piotr started to follow. Led by the second young mane, they moved past the couches toward a hallway that had several doors along both sides.

"Private rooms," Pietro explained unnecessarily.

They went into one, a miniature version of the larger room outside with only one large monitor per wall. The screens were tuned to the scene upstairs, but the attendant picked up a remote and aimed it at an unseen point. The channels switched in cascading fashion, the first to BBC, the second to Fox News, the third to whatever France's news channel was, the fourth to a broadcast Piotr couldn't immediately identify by the logo but then revealed itself to be Scotland's own national news. All of them were showing various angles of dark, rain-slicked highway and a destroyed tractor trailer.

"What's going on?" Wanda asked, looking around at the monitors.

"Turn the volume up on that one," Shinobi ordered, pointing at the fourth wall's monitor, which was now showing the exterior of a Burger King.

The attendant pushed buttons that muted the club's music and paused as if to remember which code raised the television's volume.

"--teen dead, although that number is unconfirmed," a woman's voice broke the heavy silence. "Authorities are asking..."

"Fuck!" Pietro spat out from where he was standing before the wall showing the Fox News feed. There was a map of Scotland on the screen with a red line tracing a path down the northeast coast toward Aberdeen. Inset, on the upper right hand corner of the screen, was a photograph of the X-Men. "It's David."

"David?" Piotr asked, confused. He was splitting his attention between the screens and the other viewers, concerned for the welfare of his former teammates as well as for the obvious civilian casualties. He felt the guilt at not being with the X-Men rise and tried to ignore it; it was useless now, no matter how much he might wish it otherwise. He'd known all along that his leaving meant that they'd face whatever dangers on their own.

Shinobi had pulled out his cell phone and held it to his ear, turning his body toward the corner closest to him and holding his other hand to cover his ear. Wanda was watching the audio-enabled broadcast, now showing more rain-slicked highway with the subtitle indicating that it was the southbound A-90 near Balmedie.

"David Xavier," Wanda answered distractedly, her eyes never leaving the screen. "You saw the files. It has to be him. A path of corpses straight from Mommy to Daddy, who has already sent out his pets to corral him."

Not for the first time today, Piotr was relieved that he'd given the files to Alex. From what Piotr had seen on the disc from the twins, the data now in Alex's possession, David Xavier was the most compromising of the many secrets the Professor kept from the X-Men. A dangerous mutant, a vampiric psion who used his hosts as fuel, he lived imprisoned in a facility in the remotest part of Scotland, cared for by his mother and forgotten by his father. Even more so than Weapon X's Rogue, David Xavier was a danger to everyone on if he were on the loose. Right now, however, it was too soon for Alex to have looked at the files or to know about Proteus; Piotr had left the folders as extra tracks on an audio CD and they'd go undetected until Alex put the CD in his computer.

"STRIKE's probably got most of their Scotland detail on this already," Pietro said to no one in particular. "They've got to have at least half a dozen 'freak escapes Muir' protocols."

STRIKE, Britain's answer to SHIELD. Except without the 'No Mutants Need Apply' sign in the window, of course. They'd followed the X-Men around London at a discreet distance; the local division chief had made it clear that he viewed Professor Xavier's tour as an unnecessary invitation to danger and chaos.

On all four walls, reporters in raingear spoke solemnly to cameras as they stood next to the wet highway, sirens in the background flashing an ugly, slippery red in the darkness. "Are you so certain that he's come after the Professor?"

"You've got a room full of experts on Daddy Issues," Shinobi answered with dark amusement as he held the phone from his mouth for a moment. "He's going after Charles. Even if he has to burn through all of Scotland to do so..." He brought the phone back to its position. "This is the Black King's Bishop. Put me through to the Black King... I _know_ they're in session. This is important... Well then tell them to turn on the damned television. Proteus is loose." He snapped the phone closed angrily.

"They'll figure it out soon enough." Wanda took a sip of her wine and Piotr remembered that he was still holding his snifter. He put it down on a table near his left knee. "If London hasn't called yet, then they will imminently. They have to make sure that nobody traces that pretty red line all the way back to Muir."

Pietro commandeered one of the television screens and the remote and flipped channels at a speed that made Piotr dizzy to watch, so he didn't, instead sitting down across from the Scottish channel's screen. Across the room, Shinobi and Wanda made calls on their cell phones, each call brief and agitated. The decadence around them occasionally made its presence felt, the music and low laughter from the main viewing room audible as attendants rushed in and out of the room, transforming it from being conducive to private pleasure to a simple war room by bringing in small tables that were taller and sturdier than the low ones at the ends of the couches and three laptop computers.

Wanda put down her cell phone long enough to set herself up at one of the computers and told Piotr to use the other two keep tabs on the news sites and the largest of the mutant bulletin boards. He'd only known a few of the chat rooms and weblogs; social interaction via the internet had always been Henry's thing.

While some of the chat rooms had surprisingly accurate theories, the news agencies had no idea of the true nature of the situation; there were no survivors among the witnesses to David Xavier's carnage and nobody would confirm a mutant presence for fear of sparking yet another riot a day after the fiasco caused by the visiting X-Men. Piotr bridled at the BBC's phrasing as they made it sound like the X-Men had provoked the crowd into frenzy in some fashion beyond merely appearing in public.

Pietro occasionally called out to Wanda. He spoke in shorthand and not entirely in English; Piotr knew Magneto and the Professor had come up with their own 'natural language' for mutants, but Epsilon-Omega spoken aloud sounded much like the pig latin that Bobby had painstakingly tried to teach him and it was ultimately tantalizingly close to comprehensible without actually crystallizing into sense. Shinobi, on the other hand, spoke refined English, especially when he'd finally gotten through to the Black King.

By the time an attendant announced quietly that dinner would be served, they'd put together a rough sketch of what had happened during the day. David Xavier had broken out of Muir Island in the morning. He'd slaughtered most of the island facility's staff, then the crew of the boat he'd boarded to get him to the mainland. His path toward Aberdeen was easily traced, but things got hazy after that. A London Hellfire Club operative with STRIKE reported that Proteus, David Xavier's codename among the entities that knew of him, had possibly jumped into one of the X-Men, but that was unconfirmed as it couldn't be verified that all of the X-Men had been present at the scene of the trailer accident.

"We apologize for anticipating your choices," the head attendant apologized as he stood before Shinobi and snuck a glance at Wanda. "Under the circumstances, we felt it might be best."

After a nod from Shinobi, the attendant gestured at the waitstaff gathered by the door. Two women brought in a table and chairs and attendants flittered around setting up the impromptu dining area. Shinobi stood up from the couch he'd been reclining on and offered a hand to Wanda, who was across from him. Pietro, still with his back to the room, didn't move from the flickering television screen, so Piotr sat across from Shinobi and next to Wanda.

On the BBC feed, over Shinobi's shoulder, grief-stricken family members of the Burger King massacre tried to rush past the policemen standing guard on the scene's perimeter. They were soaking wet with rain, dark shapes against the bright slickers of the officers as the television cameras zoomed in. Piotr was disgusted by the intrusion into this sudden, sharp and very personal anguish and looked away.

"Pietro," Wanda called sharply. "We have a busy night ahead of us."

Pietro turned with a sigh and dropped the remote casually on the couch as he cross the room to the table. No sooner had he sat down than the head attendant snapped his fingers once, bringing a wave of waiters over with plates of artfully composed salads.

"I took the liberty, Monsieur," he began hesitantly, gesturing for the sommelier's assistant. The young woman approached cautiously, holding out a bottle.

"I shoot, my dear," Shinobi told her with a slow smile, lifting her bowed chin with his fingertip so as to look at her face, "but never the messenger. It's a fine choice, although the '93 was a better year. You may open it."

Dinner was sumptuous, although nobody was in the proper mood to enjoy it. As the main entrees arrived, the BBC feed showed an old file photo of Magneto and footage of the Brotherhood's attack on London's Parliament. Scott had been with them at the time, but it wasn't public knowledge. Wanda looked behind her and sighed.

"It's just as well that we're going tonight," she said, frowning. "Charles should be too busy with Proteus to notice us moving around, but I don't want to think about Wendy and Pete getting recognized by someone who saw us today."

"They're not showing any mug shots," Shinobi replied with a shrug. "Do you want my jet? It's in Paris."

Pietro shook his head and looked up from where he was pulling a melon wedge out from under a careful arrangement of peach slices. "We'd better go through our own channels. Especially if they do show any _mug shots_."

Shinobi shook out his wrist and looked at his watch. "Is there a flight out of De Gaulle this late? The airport here closed hours ago."

Piotr looked at his own watch; it was after midnight. He'd been up for almost two days with only a couple of naps to sustain him, but he was no longer tired. Or, rather, he was past the point of exhaustion where he could even feel tired. He had been running on adrenaline for most of the time, first with their flight and then when the magnitude of his situation had hit, and then with the Proteus massacres.

"I've arranged for a flight," Wanda answered simply.

There was eventually footage of the X-Men fighting Proteus on Fox News, but it was grainy from being enlarged as it has been shot from a great distance; in the rain and darkness only the effects of Bobby's and Ororo's more spectacular powers were visible. There were no telltale red beams, however, and Scott's absence concerned Piotr. If Proteus had jumped into Scott... But instinct told him that he hadn't; if David Xavier had possessed Scott, there'd have been a wild display of Cyclops's power. Which begged the question: where was Scott and who else was missing? Had Xavier sent Scott out to look for him and not been able to recall him in time to go after Proteus? But Scott had a link with Jean, not to mention the Professor's own reach.... which would mean that the Professor knowingly sent the X-Men into a fight without, at the very least, their field leader. He'd done that before, when Scott had been off in the Savage Lands, but it hadn't gone well and, in the end, Scott had had to bail them out anyway. Jean was not gifted with command skills and the team would have balked at anyone else issuing orders; it was a permanent flaw that Scott had tried to erase through drills where each of them took command, but the lessons had never taken.

"What is it?" Piotr looked up to see Pietro watching him. "Or are you just brooding?"

Piotr narrowed his eyes in irritation, then shook his head. "Just trying to figure out what happened with the X-Men tonight."

"What should have been expected of a group of teenagers with haphazard and mostly theoretical training and delusions of vigilantism," Shinobi answered with a snort. "They're not well-trained or well-organized. Especially not without someone telling them what to do."

"Cyclops..." Wanda began.

"Cyclops isn't there," Piotr finished, looking at Shinobi, whose disdain had slid into more benign amusement. "I don't think Jean is there, either."

"Probably off looking for you," Pietro said through a mouthful of cantaloupe. "Which, I'll admit, is demonstrating a little more interest than we'd thought he'd show at your disappearance."

"And that means that we've underestimated you," Wanda added as she arranged the sliver of gjetost on her pear slice. She bit into the combination delicately, one fingertip catching the drop of juice that escaped her lips.

"How so?" Piotr asked, curious.

"Unless Xavier's sending Cyclops off on a wild-goose chase, which is a possibility but not a good one, he's deemed you important enough to be looked for _now_ and not after the fiasco with Proteus is ended." Wanda wiped her mouth carefully and placed her napkin on the table, making ready to rise. "_He_ had to have known what he was sending the X-Men off to take care of, even if the rest of you didn't. It was -- and is -- in his best interests to have Proteus taken care of permanently and immediately. Sending the X-Men into action without Cyclops is not the way to go about achieving that."

Pietro started to stand, still cramming fruit into his mouth and so Piotr, too, stood up. Shinobi, watching Wanda with a connoisseur's appreciative eye, stayed seated.

"His book and his traveling circus are leaving London with worse publicity than when they arrived," Wanda continued as she reached for her purse. "It's got to be near-fatal to the _Dream_ to have the X-Men look like buffoons when faced with a mutant threat that will turn out to be his own fifteen-year-old son. So whatever it is about you -- or, more probably, whatever it is you know and he's worried will fall into someone else's hands -- is important enough that he's risking an awful lot by looking for you."

"Which is why we really must eat and run," Pietro said as he wiped his hands on his napkin. "Lille worked as a hidey-hole, but now we have to go through Paris and it's only a matter of time before Jean comes looking for us there."

Shinobi stood, too, and nodded. "At least let me arrange a car for you to Paris. The train is infrequent and slow at this hour."

Ten minutes later, they were being ushered into the back of a large Mercedes sedan. Pietro ran back to the hotel to retrieve their things while Wanda chatted with Shinobi, who was about to request the company of the pretty sommelier's assistant for the evening.

"I look forward to seeing you again in the future, Piotr," Shinobi said as they stood next to the idling car. He held out his hand to shake and Piotr did. Off to the side, Pietro was watching them and looking vaguely self-satisfied. But Piotr had come to realize that that was Pietro's natural expression -- that, or disdain -- and wasn't sure if it meant anything. That the twins hoped that Shinobi would think well of him was obvious, but to what purpose, he had yet to figure out. "May you learn what you need to find your way."

Piotr was confused by the farewell and it's accompanying paternal-without-being-patronizing smile -- Shinobi obviously knew where the twins were taking him (or, at least thought he did) -- but said nothing.

The car pulled out of the underground garage and into the near-empty streets of Lille, the wheels passing over the cobblestone streets with a muted rumble before hitting blacktop. There was a privacy glass between the back seat and the driver and Piotr finally asked the question that had been burning within him since the first summons to leave the X-Men.

"Where are we going?" He turned slightly and looked down at Wanda. "For real. Not to hide, but wherever the end destination truly is. And why do you not want Shinobi knowing where that is?"

The last had come as a sudden realization as the car door had closed; there was no reason to go through the effort and expense of chartering a flight to leave a major airport after-hours if Shinobi had both the power and the wealth to make it happen easily.

Pietro laughed quietly, but said nothing and kept looking out the window on his side. Wanda gave him a warm smile.

"There are some things Shinobi doesn't need to know," she said, shrugging slightly. "He's a good friend to us, but... our interests are in common, not identical. He is driven by other forces, no matter how strongly he feels for the mutant cause. He would not understand some of our actions."

Piotr was sure that it wasn't the murders and destruction that Wanda was referring to. "So why was it so important I meet him?"

"We're his investment," Pietro answered, leaning forward so he could be seen. "And you're our latest asset."

"I wouldn't put it like that," Wanda cut in, giving her brother a sour look.

"Why not?"

Wanda made a disgusted noise, but Piotr interrupted. "And our destination?"

"New York," Pietro said, leaning back and looking out the window again. "No better place than right under Uncle Charles's nose."

Piotr couldn't imagine being able to hide for very long in New York City; it was too close, despite the sheer numbers of people around to blend in amongst. He knew both Jean and the Professor could find him anywhere in New York if they were looking for him and it only stood to reason that they would, at some point. They both knew he'd lived nowhere else in America and it made sense for him to return there. Which is why it made _no_ sense to actually go back. Unless this was, in fact, some sort of test engineered by Xavier, albeit one complicated by Proteus -- and whether his being returned by the twins was a sign of passing it or failing it, he couldn't guess. The twins could also be planning a double-cross of their own -- get Piotr to defect to them and then give him back to Xavier as a gift, proof that they were not the little children he apparently still considered them to be.

He wanted to ask more questions, but Wanda had closed her eyes and Pietro was not paying attention. So the rest of the ride passed silently and, despite his renewed fears, Piotr had fallen into a light doze when he was roused by a gentle elbow to his ribs.

"We're here," Wanda said quietly.

The car door opened and Piotr stepped out, followed quickly by Wanda. They were not in front of the airport; they were on the tarmac itself, right next to a ladder leading to a small plane. It was a corporate jet, he knew, despite never having been on one or even up close to one. There was a logo on the side, but he didn't recognize it and there were no words beneath it. Wanda moved past him and headed for the ladder, but Piotr didn't follow immediately and she turned around to give him a questioning look.

"You're not scared of flying, are you?" Pietro asked from right behind him. "You've ridden in that Blackbird enough times. I guarantee this pilot's got more flight time than Cyclops."

"Why New York?"

"The proper question is 'Why New York _now_?'," Pietro corrected, stepping around him so that they were face to face. "Our final destination was always there. But New York has an especial attraction right now because that's where Uncle Charles _isn't_."

Piotr opened his mouth to say that that wasn't an answer to his question, but Pietro shook his head. "You'll find out in a few hours. Don't want to spoil the surprise." With that, he turned and walked toward the ladder.

The logic made sense -- whatever was to happen in New York couldn't happen under the watchful mental eyes of the X-Men's two telepaths, especially if the Professor had access to Cerebro -- but that was not truly comforting. Nor was the lack of malice in Pietro's expression. Piotr didn't _feel_ like a lamb being led off to slaughter, but he'd made bad errors in judgment before. But there was nowhere to go at this stage, so he followed Pietro.

The plane's doorway was much too short for him and he had to duck to pass through it, then turn himself sideways to get through the narrow hallway between the cockpit area and the main cabin. The two stewardesses pressed themselves against the walls and apologized.

They were not the only passengers. A man in his fifties and a woman not much younger were sitting in the first two of the plane's eight seats; he had a briefcase open and was poring over printed documents and she was reading a magazine. They both looked up as Wanda led them past, but said nothing. Wanda gestured toward the seat behind the woman and Piotr went to it. Made of soft leather, it looked like a lounge chair more than an airplane seat, more than big enough to accommodate his girth and comfortable enough that he was asleep moments after takeoff.

It was almost six in the morning in New York City by the time they made their way to the curb outside the terminal at JFK. A weekday morning at one of the nation's busiest airports and they'd had to fight through crowds of business travelers and avoid airport shuttles and over-caffeinated taxi drivers. Wanda and Pietro, changed back into jeans and casual clothes, were looking around and Piotr wondered who could possibly be meeting them.

"Aunt Sally!" Wanda cried out in her Wendy voice, waving her arms dramatically and Piotr looked around to see who was passing themselves off as Wendy and Pete Maximoff's aunt. A middle-aged woman, nondescript to the point of perfection, was standing next to an idling forest green minivan and she waved back; Pietro nudged him toward her.

'Aunt Sally' greeted the three with equal enthusiasm, asking them how their vacation had gone and whether they'd taken pictures. Another example of hiding in plain sight, Piotr assumed, acting out the motions of a typical returning tourist and thereby becoming indistinct and thus unmemorable. A policeman stopped the staged reunion by warning them about getting a ticket for idling in the pick-up lane and they bundled into the van, Pietro up front and Wanda gesturing for Piotr to precede her into the back with its individual seats. The surreal (to his mind) pretense continued until the car was on South Conduit Avenue and out of the airport complex, when it was dropped with a suddenness that was just as jarring.

Piotr looked out the window. They were on the Belt Parkway, which snaked its way through Brooklyn and eventually toward Manhattan. It was one of the worst places to be during rush hour and, while it was still the early part, the morning rush was very much in bloom. Pietro turned on the radio and changed the station to the news, finally turning it off after no word about the events in Scotland and four updates on how backed up the Gowanis and Cross Bronx were.

It was almost an hour later when 'Aunt Sally', who had not spoken a word since the airport, switched lanes to point them in the direction of the Verrazano Bridge. Almost nobody was heading _to_ Staten Island at that hour, so traffic was lightened considerably and they were able to accelerate faster than ten miles per hour. Once on Staten Island, 'Aunt Sally' negotiated local roads until she slowed the car to a stop outside the Ferry Terminal. Wanda and Pietro exited without speaking and Piotr followed suit. There were waves of people crossing the streets and getting off of buses and out of cars and streaming toward the terminal for the ride to Manhattan. Piotr nearly collided with a schoolgirl, oblivious with her headphones blasting, and ran to catch up with Wanda; Pietro was out of sight.

They entered the main terminal, but broke away from the crowd before the last hallway toward the ferries. Down a staircase and through a door marked Electrical Closet, which was neither a closet nor had any switches visible. It led to another staircase and a dank hallway with peeling paint on the walls, and finally a door to the outside. Inside the door was a row of pegs with dark blue slickers hanging from them. The slickers had "OEM" printed on them in large yellow letters and Wanda tossed one to Piotr before donning hers. Pietro was waiting outside, already wearing a slicker and a matching cap. He handed two to Wanda, who handed one to Piotr, who put it on without even wondering to what purpose the charade was for this time.

Pietro led them down a cracked sidewalk toward the water. There was a small wooden dock there and an appropriately small boat was waiting there. The boat's driver, also dressed as a member of the city's Office of Emergency Management, watched them board. "Let's go," Pietro said once Piotr had found a place to stand.

The boat pulled away from the dock slowly, turned to head north, then sped up once it had cleared the area around the ferry terminal. Piotr found a handle to hold on to, but Wanda braced her feet the way savvy New Yorkers do so that they can ride a moving subway without holding on and stood on her own. Pietro stood next to the pilot, although it didn't appear that he was saying anything to him.

The boat continued north quickly, toward Manhattan, and Piotr wondered why the twins had chosen this route; it had to be the slowest and most complicated way of getting from the airport to the city. There was a subway line that could have gotten them downtown in an hour and even if they had stayed on the Belt, they would have already been over one of the bridges that connected Brooklyn to Manhattan.

The answer came to him as the boat gently bore left, west, and away from Brooklyn. Toward the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, with New Jersey on the other side. It still might have been faster to drive or take the subway if they were going to Jersey; the PATH ran every few minutes at this time of day. Unless...

The metal shell of the hulking Triskelion, New York City base of operations for SHIELD and home of the Ultimates team, shone brightly in the morning sun. It was south of the Statue of Liberty, at the insistence of both New York's and New Jersey's governments, who hadn't wanted the massive structure blocking their harbors' view of the monument. And the boat, Piotr realized with shock and horror, was heading straight for it.

The Triskelion had sturdy docks and different sized slips and the boat pulled into one of the smallest ones, purring to a halt right next to the ladder. Pietro was out and up first, looking around with his hand at his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun. Wanda went next and Piotr followed, unable to imagine any scenario that had the co-leaders of the Brotherhood of Mutants landing at SHIELD headquarters without an entire SWAT team there to bring them down. There were heavily armed patrols visible, the full-body armor and mirrored face shields of the uniform making it impossible to tell gender, let alone intention.

Pietro and Wanda walked together toward the nearest entry door and Piotr had to force himself to follow; they _couldn't_ have gotten him to leave the X-Men part of the way around the world just to deliver him twenty miles from where he had called home for the last few years... could they?

The machine-gun bearing soldier in front of the door didn't move as they approached. The twins stopped at a white line painted into the ground. A mechanical arm dropped down and Piotr realized it was a retinal scanner. First Pietro, then Wanda, then Pietro waved his hand to indicate that Piotr should do the same. It was a painless procedure, but Piotr had to re-do the scan after flinching; Pietro's cat-with-the-canary smile had startled him.

"Yeah, thought you'd flip," Pietro said as the arm swung back up and a buzzer sounded from inside. The guard stepped away and the door slid open.

Colonel Nicholas Fury was standing on the other side, looking somewhere between implacable and mean. He stepped forward and walked straight up to Piotr, his one eye glaring menacingly.

"In order to be here as the bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed welcome wagon," he said in a low, steady voice, "I had to get up too fucking early in the morning and leave behind a nice, warm bed and a nice, warm woman. You'd better be worth it, Rasputin."

* * *

* * *


	7. Moebius Strip

Acts of Contrition: Chapter Six 

* * *

"-- not what Uncle Sam pays you for, Lieutenant. You don't get paid to think until you've got stars instead of bars on your collar. Right now, you get paid to _do_, specifically do what _I_ tell you to do. And I'm telling you to go. I see you back here without the Captain, I'm putting you on Banner's detail. _Inside_ perimeter." 

The door opened all the way and Nicholas Fury burst in, a file-bearing personal assistant on his heels and a woman in the dark blue of SHIELD's uniform trailing behind. Piotr, who had been hunched over a cup of coffee, sat up straight. Fury didn't seem to notice as he stalked to the end of the conference table and sat down, his PA placing the files to one side as Fury put his own coffee cup down on the other.

"Jane, I want the extraction report on my desk by eleven-hundred," Fury barked at the woman, who nodded and tapped at the screen of her PDA with the stylus. "Get Sanchez to debrief the Doublemint Twins and see if he can't get a lead on Nairobi. I will want a full and current report on the Proteus crap the minute I'm done here. You have my permission to wield my authority like the hammer of God that it is to get it done -- and tell Lleyton-Barnes over at STRIKE that he better have a damned good reason for turning down the Ultimates' offer to help. Now flee."

Jane -- Piotr wondered if that was a first or a last name -- turned and left the room, deftly avoiding the armed soldier who'd come barreling in, but had pulled up short when he saw Fury watching him. Like all of the SHIELD troops Piotr had seen thus far, this one wore black body armor over his dark blue uniform and he reached up with the hand that had been on the barrel of his assault rifle to adjust the chest pad as if it were crooked.

"There's an update on..." he trailed off, looking meaningfully at Piotr.

"He's cleared for Proteus, Flaherty," the PA said quietly as he sorted through the stack of folders in his arm. Uniformed and a Lieutenant by rank, the PA couldn't have been much older than Henry. Like the (initially incongruously named) Beast, he didn't have the hard edges of a fighter, but instead exuded the serenity and competence of a man who probably needed both in abundance to chase after Nick Fury for a living.

"He's jumped the Channel, sir," Private Flaherty blurted out. "Proteus. He's in France."

Fury sighed. "They're going to be insufferable," he muttered. "Have Jane call Berchauld and make him the same off we made STRIKE. The Frogs'll be happy enough to have someone bail them out... again."

Flaherty saluted, spun on his heel, and departed. The door swooshed close and there was quiet then, with only the scratch of Fury's pen heard over the hum of the room's electronics. Xavier respected his abilities and, Piotr suspected, had kept the X-Men out of SHIELD's way precisely as a show of that respect. But if Xavier had known of Fury for a long time on his own, the X-Men themselves only encountered him for the first time in India, while they'd been imprisoned and enslaved by Weapon X. They'd been assigned to intercept his kidnappers -- Wraith had parked Piotr in front of a speeding train and bet even money that the immovable object won out -- and Fury (along with about seven hundred SHIELD troops) returned the favor in Finland. In truth, it had been a favor to Logan that was being repaid, but none of them had cared too much at the time. Fury had let them go, along with the Brotherhood, and while a van full of SHIELD agents came up to the mansion to debrief them on Weapon X, that had been the end of their interactions. Until now.

"Do you know why you're here, Rasputin?" Fury asked, not looking up from the stack of papers he was signing.

"No," he admitted.

"Good."

Piotr frowned and looked at his coffee cup, as if the answer could be found in its depths. There was very little else going on in the room to keep his attention if he wasn't going to watch Fury do paperwork.

They were in one of SHIELD's conference rooms; it was sleek and sterile with all of its technological marvels and toys build into the walls and hidden from view. A large high-definition screen was silently showing footage from Proteus's continued rampage through Europe, but Piotr refused to let himself watch lest the guilt that had been lurking behind the adrenaline rush of escape surge and overwhelm him. It had been more than twelve hours since the X-Men had been trailing Proteus and there had been no resolution; it was harder to keep his focus on the effects of Jean and Scott's presumed absence rather than of his own.

The door opened again and a man and a woman entered. They were both in their early thirties and, despite the civilian clothing and casual bearing, they didn't look out of place in a military complex. They looked around the empty table, then at Piotr, then at each other. The man shrugged and they sat down in the chairs closest to them.

"I seem to recall a memo about all personnel being in uniform while on the Triskelion," Fury said evenly, still not looking up. He flipped over the page he was reading, following the lines with his pen.

"We are your deep cover agents," the woman replied with obvious amusement and an even more obvious Russian accent. She flipped her dark red hair behind one shoulder. "We _are_ in uniform."

Piotr raised on eyebrow in surprise and suspicion. The exchange was too casual considering there was a stranger present and imparted far too much information to be done without intent. Fury had never asked why Piotr had left the X-Men or why he'd gone with the twins; there was every chance that this was an attempt to plant information to be brought back to Xavier or to some other person.

Alert now with the possibilities of what Fury was planning, Piotr looked over at the woman, who in turn looked back and gave him a wink.

"I'm not supposed to expect anything less out of her, Hawkeye," Fury sighed, signing the last of the papers with a flourish and then leaning back so that the PA could collect the pile, "but what's your excuse?"

The woman laughed; it was a deep, throaty chuckle that reflected more in her eyes than in her expression. She was a strikingly attractive woman in the classical Russian style and everything about her announced that she knew it.

"I haven't stayed alive as long as I have by contradicting women, sir," the man replied with a shrug. Piotr thought he heard a drawl, but couldn't be sure. It was not strong enough for Piotr to mark him as anything more specific than 'American'.

"Remind me to tell your wife that next time I see her."

Hawkeye chuckled in appreciation and leaned back in his seat. There was something of Logan in the way that he moved and Piotr was at a loss to explain how except that they both managed to look totally relaxed and very dangerous all at once.

"Do you speak?" the stunning woman asked in Moscow-accented Russian. "Or has your vow of silence been extended past the media interviews into everyday life?"

Piotr knew he hadn't been able to keep the surprise out of his face that his low media profile had been noted. "I speak when I have something to say," he replied, his voice almost a croak after keeping quiet for so long. He'd barely said a word since they'd gotten on the plane.

She nodded, as if something had been confirmed. "So you really are Siberian," she mused. "The accent is charmingly rustic; don't do what I did and bury it behind Moscow's steel. But your features... You photograph as a Russian, but it's not so strong in person. Let me guess: a grandfather or great-grandfather got stationed out there and never left."

"Grandfather," he confirmed.

Still smiling at Piotr, the woman leaned over slightly toward her companion, Hawkeye, and rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. "That'll be five dollars," she told him, looking over her shoulder.

Piotr was more amused than insulted that they'd bet on his heritage; he knew he looked like his father's father. He'd worked hard to eliminate the provincialism from his bearing and appearance; the accent was harder and less important -- he was supposed to be the strong, silent type and, besides, everyone he had worked with and spoken to had known he was not Russian.

"I never accepted your bet, Widow," Hawkeye replied with a bemused shake of his head. "I didn't like your odds."

"Coward." Accusingly, and accompanied by a charming pout.

"Wise man," he corrected.

"Children," Fury intoned warningly.

"She started it," Hawkeye protested, keeping a straight face while Fury glared at him.

"There's a reason I don't bring you two in very often," Fury growled, looking at his watch. "All right, we're starting; I have enough actual problems to solve without spending any more time on one of our own devising. Rudelsky, sit down and stop hovering over me like a pigeon looking for a place to shit. And turn off the walls."

The PA sat down in the chair to Fury's right, pressing some buttons in a panel inlaid into the table. The plasma screens went dark.

"Now, if I were a cynical man," Fury began with deceptive mildness, looking straight at Piotr, "I'd remember that you were a coin flip away from felony murder charges in two countries _before_ Xavier pulled your ass out of the fire and that you are _still_ an illegal immigrant in this fine land."

The accusations of serving his own self-interest galled, but Piotr fought the urge to either speak up or look down; he wouldn't let Fury rattle him by spotlighting his sins and it seemed unlikely that this Widow and Hawkeye pair were unfamiliar with his history.

"You left Moscow three months before Project Rainstorm," he went on, ticking off points on his fingers, "You wind up with Xavier a mere ten days before EUCO swoops in over Brighton Beach and arrests twenty-eight, and now you've quit the X-Men on the morning before they face their biggest challenge and what looks to be their most crushing defeat."

Fury paused to let his implications sink in. Piotr met his steady gaze without flinching.

"But I am not a cynical man." Fury waved his left hand in a gesture of bounty and magnanimity. "I am a powerful man and I got to be that way by being wise and not listening to the little voice in my head that says you're here because you've always been a rat who jumps off sinking ships. I am not a cynical man and I will believe that you are lucky... if you give me reason to do so."

Piotr still wasn't sure what he was supposed to say. It would be ridiculous to deny how... fortuitous his life's trajectory looked to have been over the past few years, even as it had felt nothing like good luck at the time. He'd been brought out of Moscow by his boss because Boris needed someone to shore up the enforcers in Brooklyn and he'd been low-man on the totem pole; he had fled Brighton Beach as much in fear of Sentinels as of confessing that he'd royally botched the transaction and Boris's bosses were out a million dollars _and_ three SAMs; and he'd left the X-Men on what was perhaps nothing more solid than a hunch and some philosophical differences. The convenience of it all was only evident in hindsight, if at all, but it was foolish to try to point that out without any sort of evidence to support it. From the outside, it looked like opportunism -- or cowardice.

There was also the matter of confessing anything to Fury or to SHIELD. It was his nature to want to trust authority, some quirk of optimism despite a lifetime of being proven wrong. And so he wanted to trust Fury, despite having no reason to do so. SHIELD had not helped the Sentinels per se, but they'd stormed every mutant hideout and compound they'd come across, citing national security and vague references to David Koresh and the Unabomber as justification.

He wanted to believe that Fury would help him, but he knew better -- any help he got would be for a price and that price would probably be some kind of betrayal of the X-Men. He would need SHIELD more than they'd need him. That had always been the case; one word from them and he was in a prison, either here or back in Siberia.

"I am not here to prove myself to you," he finally said, mustering up all of the pride left within him. He'd been dragged through two countries and across one ocean and, as disappointed as he was with himself for being so easily led, it nonetheless _irritated_ him that they were all treating him like a backward child who didn't know how the world really worked. "I don't know why I am here, why the twins brought me to you. But it was not to beg for your mercy."

In his peripheral vision, the Widow shifted in her seat and Piotr looked over at her. She was sharing a look he couldn't catch with Hawkeye, who raised an eyebrow in return.

"Why do you think you _are_ here?" Fury asked calmly.

"I don't _know_," Piotr half-snarled. He was tired and afraid and too frustrated to play games with a strategist like Nick Fury, who'd known the rules and the game plan all along. He didn't know why the twins were working with SHIELD, but while his gut instinct told him that they wouldn't have given him up as a sacrifice, he couldn't be sure. Wanda and Pietro had been banking on his naïveté.

"You _don't_ know," the Widow agreed with a shrug, shifting forward in her seat. Fury, who had been leaning on the table, pushed back as if relinquishing the interrogation and Piotr felt peevish at this too-obvious Good-Cop/Bad-Cop routine. "What is your best guess?"

"I'm a pawn," he spat back. "Again. I am being traded for something. Exchange value to be determined by how useful I prove to be."

"And?" the Widow prompted with surprising earnestness, leaning further forward to rest her forearms on the tabletop. She sounded like the Professor when he was trying to nurse someone through a logical argument when they were too frustrated to think clearly. It was a teacher's mien, hopeful and confident that illumination was only a moment away.

"And what?" Piotr leaned back in his seat, the flare of anger gone from him as quickly as it came. "What do I think you want? I know what you want. What do I think will happen to me if I don't cooperate? I imagine that there is a wide variety of options and most of them involve prison labor camps."

"Never let it be said that the Russians aren't romantics," a new voice said from the doorway. "Romantic in the melodramatic sense, I mean. Not the hearts-and-flowers kind."

Captain America, without his famous shield, sat down at the opposite end of the conference table from Fury. Hawkeye, who had been casually leaning back with his elbows around the edges of the chair, sat forward and gave him a two-fingered salute. The Widow gave him a quick smile paired with a smoldering gaze.

Piotr looked over at the living icon and was met with a gaze of discomforting intensity. He looked down and then looked up again, embarrassed.

"Relax, son, I was in deep freeze for the Cold War," Captain America said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. The voice was a young man's voice -- he looked to be the same age as Hawkeye -- but the tone and timbre were all wrong. As if something essential had not quite defrosted when they'd dug him out of the ice.

Piotr remembered when SHIELD had introduced Captain America to the twenty-first century; a gala celebration to take some of the heat off of the still-new Ultimates. It had coincided with one of Alex's rare returns to Westchester and the team's sitting around the giant television watching the report from the red carpet had been one of the few stress-free points of the visit; Alex had been typically dubious, but Piotr had been hopeful. Captain America was the embodiment of a set of values that gave bottom to the flashy, thus-far-inconsequential Ultimates; he was a hero and not a celebrity. Alex had called him gullible, Jean poetic, and Scott had watched it all without saying a word. And here he was, a year or so later, feeling anything but hopeful in Captain America's presence.

"If we're done with the drama," Fury began sourly, "I'd like to move on."

A quiet shuffling sound as Rudelsky moved the folders around to better be in a position to take notes. He looked up attentively at Fury, who in turn was looking straight at Piotr.

"Mister Rasputin here has decided to retire from the mutant vigilante team known as the X-Men," Fury began, sarcasm dripping from his words. "Now, while this is an admirable endeavor and a wise decision -- especially considering Charlie Xavier's band of merry mites is currently getting its collective ass handed to them by his own son -- one has to wonder why quitting a supposedly volunteer organization required a Level Two extraction. The X-Men _are_ a volunteer organization, aren't they, Mister Rasputin?"

Piotr, unsure if the question was rhetorical or not, just nodded.

"I agreed to this extraction because I was assured that you're brighter than the average bear and that you would prove _useful_ to SHIELD in some capacity." Fury's posture was almost relaxed and Piotr wanted to take that as a sign. "I'd prefer that usefulness to come in the form of information; Xavier makes everyone nervous for a reason and we've got piss-poor intel beyond what the Lehnsherr twins have given us."

"We've got piss-poor intel _with_ what the twins have given us," Hawkeye muttered.

"But despite the fact that there isn't _anything_ to stop me from twisting you until you start singing out what we want to hear, I won't." Fury leaned forward toward Piotr's side of the table. "First, because I don't think you know anything of value. Second, because if I'm wrong (and I don't think I am), we have a much better chance of getting the truth out of you if it comes voluntarily and not after a day or two in the white room."

"If _that_ works," the Widow murmured. Fury glared at her. "What? I read the Weapon X report."

"If I wanted backup singers, I would have given Beyoncé my cell phone number instead of the main switchboard."

Piotr schooled his features to stillness, but it was hard. Here, finally, he'd been granted proof that the great Nick Fury was not omniscient. And he wanted to laugh out loud, in part for this proof and in part because there was no way he could use it or even acknowledge its existence. What would Fury do, what would SHIELD do if they knew Magneto was alive and well and living not fifteen miles away?

"But, since you cannot earn your keep with information, you will find another tune by which to sing for your supper," Fury continued, turning back to Piotr.

"What about letting me go?" Piotr asked, knowing that that was not an option. He wanted to see what Fury's reaction would be -- the funnier Fury found the suggestion, the deeper the trouble he was in.

"Do you really want me to?" Fury asked with icy smoothness. It was meant as a rhetorical question and he didn't wait for Piotr to answer. "You are not useful to me as a civilian. And, besides, if it was as easy as all that, you would have left the X-Men on your own."

Fury held out a hand to Rudelsky, who gave him a folder. Fury put it down and opened it, picking up his pen.

"Tomorrow morning, at oh-eight-hundred hours, you will report to the training complex on sublevel D6," Fury said as he read over the top sheet of the paper. "You will begin the standard SHIELD Trainee Evaluation Course. Pending the results of that, we'll..."

"What?!?" Piotr sat up sharply and put his hands on the table to push his seat back. To his left, Captain America tensed into a ready position and Piotr turned toward him before looking back at Fury. Turning him into a SHIELD agent? It made no sense and, moreover, it wasn't what he wanted. "Why would you want...? You can't..."

"Of course I can," Fury answered calmly, signing the bottom of the sheet. "You should understand the concept of indentured servitude by now, Rasputin. Boris Yagudin bought you for couple of hundred rubles and a plane ticket to Moscow. I've paid a much greater price for your freedom from Charles Xavier and you _will_ repay me for my good deed."

Piotr felt sick to his stomach and out of breath. Across the table, Hawkeye and the Widow looked at him with benign amusement, in clear appreciation of the punch line of this joke. Captain America was not smiling; he was watching Piotr with cold eyes and an impassive expression.

"For all of the damage you've done," he said in a low, even voice, "you should be able to muster up some enthusiasm for a chance to redeem yourself."

Piotr stood up and Captain America and Hawkeye did as well, both ready to spring into action.

"I've done nothing _but_ since Xavier found me," he shouted, not caring that his voice sounded panicked and too young. He felt cornered -- he _was_ cornered, in every sense. "Do you think you can shame me into cooperating? Do you think I'm not aware of what I've done?"

He turned to Fury, who was still seated and looking up at him patiently. "Why did I leave the X-Men? Because I didn't like being manipulated. I was being used. Just like the twins are using me. Just like you want to use me." He looked back at Captain America. "How am I supposed to _redeem myself_ if I keep getting passed around like a cheap whore? How am I supposed to change if all anyone ever wants me to do is perform the same old tricks?"

"The difference between a whore and a courtesan is in the company she keeps," the Widow said as the silence lengthened. She was still seated and had to look up to meet his eyes. "You cannot pretend you're a blushing virgin again, Piotr. You cannot have that innocence back. The best you can do is make sure that you're fucking the important people and that they're paying you what you're worth."

Disgusted with the way she twisted his impromptu words into an obscene analogy, Piotr opened his mouth to reply, but the Widow shook her head.

"You don't redeem yourself by going off to live in some monastery or taking a vow of non-violence or whatever," she went on, waving her hand vaguely. "You cannot wipe the slate clean if you are sitting there like a vegetable and doing nothing. You must _earn_ forgiveness."

Piotr laughed derisively. "So I break bones for SHIELD instead of for a mob boss? I will become a good person that way?"

"You become a good person by doing the right thing," Captain America said with a tired sigh as he sat down again. He gestured for Piotr to sit again and he did. Hawkeye pulled his chair back to the table and sat only after Piotr had come to rest. "We're the good guys."

"That is what Xavier told me, too," Piotr retorted, sensing defeat. It didn't matter what he thought and even less what he wanted; they'd wear him down until either he acquiesced or he was too tired to fight anymore. He felt drained and nearly laughed out loud as the urge to cry welled up. He tamped it down ruthlessly and rubbed at his face with his hands.

"The evaluation will run three days," Fury began, as if he'd never been interrupted. "Physical conditioning, language skills, intelligence, psych eval, firearms -- you ever shoot anything bigger than a handgun?"

Without removing his hands from his face, Piotr shook his head to indicate that he had not.

"PT will take a full day, at least; your mutation is going to give them fits," Fury chuckled. Piotr dropped his hands and stared at him, which only made Fury's grin broaden. "I want you to take a tactical eval; we know you know how to follow orders, but I want to know if you can give them. Do you have any special skills we should know about before we start this?"

"I can cook," he replied caustically, bitter from the turn of events and the casual way Fury was acting, as if he'd never doubted the outcome. An outcome that was probably assured, true, but Piotr spitefully wished Fury'd been more charitable in giving him a chance to save face by offering to let him join SHIELD instead of forcing the conscription.

Hawkeye snorted out a laugh and Fury glared at him. "We'll decide on the rest after the physical and psych results come back," he said, as if Piotr had never answered.

Flipping through the other pages in the folder, Fury muttered something to himself that was too quiet to be heard and held out his palm to Rudelsky, wiggling his fingers. The secretary handed him a small pad and Fury scribbled a note, tearing off the top sheet and inserting it into the folder before closing it. He checked his watch and then signed the folder itself, leaning back so that Rudelsky could pick it up and then standing.

"I am a bastard, Rasputin," he said, not unkindly. "But I am not doing this to punish you -- or to punish anyone else by proxy. I am doing what is best for this country, which is what they pay me to do. I could screw you over six ways to Sunday in order to accomplish that, but I'm not. And I trust, in time, that you will come to recognize that."

Fury looked down. "Rudelsky, you are my personal assistant. You are supposed to anticipate my needs. Why are you sitting here instead of getting me my extraction report, finding Jane, and running interference on whichever arm of the Joint Chiefs drew the short straw and must try to get me to re-assign funding?"

Rudelsky sighed, stood up, and, in a smooth movement, swept the pile of folders into his arm, picked up his electronic data pad, and avoided tripping over either the Widow's or Hawkeye's chair as he walked quickly from the room.

"Captain, I will see you later," Fury said as he moved more slowly toward the still-open door. Hawkeye pulled his chair in; the Widow just looked up as Fury shimmied behind her. Captain America stood up.

"Widow, if you don't take your firearms refresher before you leave this base, I _will_ ground you," he continued as he got to the door. "Hawkeye, make sure she does it. I let you two get away with enough; you are my elite and I will have you meet the standards everyone else does."

Fury left and, after a quick nod to the others, so did Captain America. A SHIELD soldier, wearing full body armor and a helmet, appeared. "Piotr Rasputin? Could you come with me, please?"

Piotr stood up slowly, hyperaware that everyone was watching him. He wondered what the soldier knew of him, if anything at all.

"See ya around," Hawkeye said with a grin and a friendly wave.

"Don't mourn," the Widow told him as she, too, stood up. "It feels worse than it is. I would not let him fuck you over. At least not without paying for the privilege."

"Am I supposed to say 'thank you' for that?"

She laughed. "I'd say you could make it up to me, but I think he," she gestured with her head at the still-seated Hawkeye "is more your type than I am. Not that I'm not averse to challenging that theory..."

Piotr blushed and looked down and he could hear Hawkeye's protestations drowned out by the Widow's delighted laughter as he followed the soldier down the hall.

* * *

Golden light from the late afternoon sun filled the room and glared brilliantly off of the plasma screen of the television, making the picture fade into near-invisibility. Cary Grant and James Mason bantered on, regardless. 

Piotr sat on the couch of his temporary quarters, piles of newspapers on his lap and at his side. The apartment was sleek and modern, fitting with the rest of the Triskelion's state-of-the-art design, both well-appointed and spare at the same time. Piotr wished he could appreciate it all. There was a television that cost more than a year's college tuition, a stereo that was integrated throughout the apartment -- even the bathroom -- and a kitchen that would have looked straight out of a gourmand's magazine if it hadn't obviously been stripped of potential weapons. There was a table in the corner where a computer had similarly been removed. There was no phone.

It had been five days since Fury had conscripted him into SHIELD, almost a week since he'd left the X-Men in the dead of the London night. It felt like an eternity.

A routine had been established on the first morning and repeated every day since until today: he'd be woken early by an alarm he'd never set, given an hour for a breakfast that always appeared while he was in the bathroom, and then met by two armed soldiers who would escort him down to the subterranean (sub-aquatic, really) levels where he'd spend the day as a guinea pig, undergoing tests that were never explained in advance or deconstructed afterward in his presence. He'd figured out some of them on his own - the language and computational ones had been obvious, as had been the tests of physical endurance and martial training; the cognitive and analytical tests had been more obscure in their aims and he'd only been able to guess the precise purposes. The one with the box of odds and ends that he'd assembled into a radio, a radar scanner, and a tape recorder had had nothing to do with his knowledge of electronics, for instance, and everything to do with whether he remembered what he'd seen as part of computer-based exam for reading comprehension. Lunch was provided on-site and he'd be brought back to his quarters in the evening to shower and await the soldiers who brought him dinner on a cart, which was in turn collected ninety minutes later.

He was effectively isolated, seeing only his evaluators and the same half-dozen armed agents who escorted him to and from his quarters and guarded the testing sites. Nobody else had been at the shooting range when he'd taken his firearms test; the computer lab had been empty for the evaluations there; the hallways were always cleared before he was allowed to go from one room to another. Neither Fury nor any of his minions had put in an appearance, nor had the Widow or Hawkeye. He hadn't even heard reference to the twins since they'd left him at the entrance to the Triskelion, which made him wonder if the deal was already completed - and what happened to him if Fury didn't like what he'd bought. The apartment he slept in was undoubtedly wired for video and sound; Piotr had not bothered to look for how or where.

This morning, there had been no alarm. He'd woken late and sore; there had been an obstacle course yesterday and he'd been shot in the ribs at close range with rubber bullets before he'd realized that some of the obstacles were sentient.

Breakfast had been brought, and then lunch, but no escorts and the soldiers bringing his meals had kept their silence and refused to meet his gaze when he asked them any questions. With a patience that had been nurtured into existence -- the alternative was to try to emulate one of Logan's berzerker rages and he was sure that his guards were armed to prevent that from proving successful -- Piotr had taken his meals, made himself tea, and retreated to the living room with his pile of newspapers to try to piece together the events of the outside world. And, of course, Proteus.

On that score, the newspapers were remarkably unhelpful. Kept at a distance by local authorities and operating on something between rumors and speculation, the reporters were left with nothing but hedging estimates of what was going on and these in turn were padded and prevaricated until they reached the necessary column inches and there was no difference in quality between the glossy tabloid rags and the more respected daily broadsheets.

The American coverage was both more and less sensationalist. The X-Men were considered a US-based team, but the destruction and terror was a world away and not even the Europhile _New York Times_ put the massacre of a school bus full of children in Besancon above the fold; overall, the story was getting very little coverage outside of the coast cities. Both sides of the political spectrum had their opinions and conclusions, although neither side was operating with any real knowledge.

In the end, the only facts that were indisputable and free from editorializing were that the X-Men had been chasing Proteus all over Europe for almost a week and hadn't caught him. And that Bobby had been gravely injured early on, crushed by a flying projectile. Piotr had asked his evaluators for news -- surely SHIELD had better sources than the reporters on the ground running ragged trying to keep up with Proteus -- but they'd all simply apologized and given him blank looks that didn't even pretend to any sort of sympathy. He'd taken his frustration out on the dummies and benchpresses and sparring partners, which was probably at least some of the desired effect.

None of the papers had carried a mention of Professor Xavier and there had been no subsequent mention of the lab in northern Scotland. Where Bobby had been taken for treatment -- or if he was still alive -- was unknown. Cyclops had apparently rejoined the team (if he'd ever left it) but the only mentions of Colossus were vague and speculative; Piotr wasn't sure if he was pleased or disappointed.

This morning's papers, piled up next to his mysteriously appearing breakfast, had carried hope of a conclusion. The _Times_ had a story on the third page of the front section about the death of STRIKE agent Elisabeth Braddock, who was apparently being possessed by Proteus at the time of her death. Cyclops had killed her with an optic blast, the report said, and Piotr shuddered at how that must have gone. He did not doubt that Scott had agonized -- was perhaps agonizing still -- about killing Proteus, even considering the damage he had caused. Scott would have been more upset if someone else on the team had had to use lethal force; Scott was very conscientious -- perhaps overly so -- about asking the team members to do things beyond the normal scope of the X-Men, especially if they hadn't seen him already do them. He was always the first one to stretch one of Xavier's rules and he'd definitely make himself the first to break one, no matter how necessary. Did Scott know who Proteus was? Did Jean? If they did, he couldn't imagine Scott asking anyone else -- even _letting_ anyone else -- bring the killing blow. Piotr didn't think anyone but Jean could have handled killing Xavier's son (or his innocent host) if Scott hadn't done it.

There was a beeping from the doorway and Piotr looked over. He hadn't remembered hearing the noise before. It beeped again and he wondered if it was some sort of doorbell. He didn't move to investigate, returning to his newspapers. If it was someone coming to see him, either they would enter on their own or they'd go away.

In the five days since he'd been at the Triskelion, Piotr had come to terms, more or less, with this latest sudden turn his life had taken. Kept busy by the constant testing and thus removed from the shock and anger at Fury's initial pronouncement -- and Piotr was still annoyed that it had been a pronouncement, not an offer (even an offer with no viable alternative but to accept) -- a calmness had descended upon him.

He'd left the X-Men without a real plan, at least any plan more real than 'anywhere but here'. At least that's what it felt like now; Piotr was mildly embarrassed at how _impulsive_ his departure now seemed. What would he have done if they'd made the same demand of him that Fury had, insisted upon repayment for his liberty from Xavier by enlisting him in the Brotherhood... but they hadn't. And while he understood that the twins had traded him to SHIELD, he couldn't come up with a good reason _why_. What could Fury have to give them that was of enough value to risk revealing their betrayal of Xavier -- or handing over a mutant to an organization not known for its acceptance of _Homo Superior_ -- and why would Fury give it to them if he didn't think Piotr brought information with him? Surely it wasn't to turn the X-Men's Colossus into a SHIELD trooper... a process that looked to moving inexorably toward completion.

The idea hadn't gained appeal in any real way beyond the prospect of keeping him safe from Xavier, if that was even possible. That thought had kept with him, a fear coalescing into the sureness of fact -- if he was found by the X-Men, Xavier would rewire his mind to either be as compliant as Ororo… or as dead as Magneto. Fury's offer was the best on the table.

The beeping noise sounded again and, a minute later, the door slid open and an irritated Nick Fury stalked in, his PA Rudelsky trailing behind and Hawkeye, dressed in faded jeans and a Clemson Football t-shirt with an orange cat's paw on it, ambling in afterward.

"That was your doorbell," Fury announced, squinting in the bright sunlight. He held his hand up to his forehead to shield his eye as he looked around on the coffee table that Piotr was resting his feet on. "Future refusals to answer it will be taken as passive-aggressive responses, not ignorance."

Fury reached down and picked up the remote. He aimed it at the wall of windows and the golden light dimmed to a brightness more consistent with the indoors. Hawkeye moved past him to sit on the chair adjacent to the couch; there was a seat directly behind Fury. Rudelsky stood.

"Speaking of passive-aggressive," Hawkeye chuckled, gesturing with his head at the television, where _North by Northwest_ was still playing. Fury turned, watched for a moment, then laughed.

"It's a good movie," Piotr said with a shrug, folding up the newspapers on his lap and taking his feet off of the coffee table. Sitting up, he made a pile of newspapers and placed it where his feet had been. "And I like irony."

Fury sat down and held out his hand. Rudelsky stepped forward with a folder-sized electronic notepad.

"You're an adequate shot, but no sniper," Fury began, reading off the screen. "Above-average reflexes for someone your size, in either your human form or your..."

"I am human whether my skin is flesh or steel," Piotr interrupted primly.

Fury gave him a tiresome look. "Your physical levels are roughly where we thought they'd be," he went on. "We have your records from Weapon X and you tested at comparable levels."

"Yes," Piotr agreed. It made sense that Fury's team had taken the data from Finland before they'd blown the place. "Held against my will both times."

Fury sighed. "Now, let's get this out in the open right now, Rasputin. You're not a prisoner here. This ain't no Mod Squad setup and you're no Femme Nikita."

"Do you know that you're the first person to talk to me in almost a week?" Piotr asked by way of reply. He picked up the mug he was using for his tea and took a sip, even though there were only dregs and the liquid was tepid. "If we can call this talking _to_ instead of talking _at_. There are how many thousands of people working on this base? I have seen what, maybe a dozen of them? The ones I do see will not answer my questions or ask me anything that does not pertain to your required evaluations. I want to know what has happened to my friends and nobody will tell me."

"There's a very good reason why we're keeping you quarantined from the general population," Fury broke in.

"You are afraid that I am a plant, so I am escorted from place to place by armed guards and I'm not even allowed to have utensils." Piotr gestured with his free hand toward the kitchen area. "Explain to me how this is different from prison -- or from Weapon X."

"The food's better?" Hawkeye asked, shrugging when both Fury and Piotr gave him dirty looks. "Just tryin' to find a bright spot. 'Cuz, you know, he has a point."

Fury pursed his lips and shook his head. "We know Xavier sent Cyclops to the Savage Lands as a spy," he explained evenly. It was neither apology nor excuse, but a statement of fact that would be as much of an explanation as would be provided. "We know that Cyclops didn't _know_ he was a plant until it was all over. There are only so many ways to protect against a Trojan horse. Scott Summers thought he was leaving the X-Men of his own free will, too."

"And you're sure now that I am not a plant?" It was a genuine question. More than once in the past few days, Piotr had wondered about telepathically implanted programming. Pietro's amazement that Xavier hadn't done anything to his mind coupled with the memories of Scott's quiet fury at being telepathically manipulated had left Piotr half-fearing that he was not so much a fugitive from telepaths as a human version of one of those satellites NASA shot off into space to collect data as it moved through the galaxy into places man couldn't yet travel.

"As sure as we can be without having a telepath of our own go through your head," Fury admitted. There was a kindness to his voice that made Piotr think that he'd understood the true nature of the question. "We don't have any telepaths, so don't start worrying about that. And the Triskelion is psi-shielded, so I'm not worried about any kind of delayed activation."

Piotr nodded, a little relieved.

"Now, back to what I was _trying_ to discuss." Fury looked down at the electronic notepad. "Your physical evaluations were all where we'd expect them to be, but that's really not why I'm interested in you. You're big, you're strong, and you're fairly bulletproof. So is the average Abrams tank and we have enough of those."

Fury held the notepad out in the general direction of Rudelsky, whom Piotr had completely forgotten was present, and the PA took it from him.

Ever since Fury had started speaking of the results of the evaluations, Piotr had felt a sense of dread had descended upon him. It solidified now, a cold ball in his stomach, and he waited for the axe to fall. As worried as he was about being tracked down by the X-Men, he'd kept careful mental notes of the paths to and from the evaluations in case he'd needed to make an escape from SHIELD; the hallways were broken up into small segments by remotely operated doors, the elevators were key-operated only, and the entire building was under video surveillance.

"You're a lot smarter than you let people believe, Rasputin," Fury said, leaning forward so that his elbows were on his knees. "You collect and process information quickly and you can _apply_ that information in short order. If you were anyone else applying for SHIELD, you would been tracked for Special Operations, probably the Quick Response Unit. If you hadn't come from the X-Men, you would have been fast-tracked for the Ultimates."

"Even with me being a mutant?"

"You wouldn't be the first," Fury said, annoyed at that admission. "But I'm not supposed to know those things. We would have downplayed the mutant thing. Hasn't been long enough since Magneto was crumpled up like a tin can and recycled."

"So what now?" Piotr winced internally. "How will I be _useful_ to you if I can't be a SHIELD agent?"

"Who said you couldn't be an agent?" Fury asked, sitting up and leaning back with a proud, satisfied expression. "I just said you couldn't work out in the open."

Hawkeye uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, holding out his right hand. "Welcome to Black Ops, Piotr Nikolayevich."

Stunned, Piotr didn't move for a moment, then mechanically extended his hand out to Hawkeye, who clasped it firmly and shook it once. A distant part of his mind realized he should perhaps be embarrassed at the Widow's words to him if Hawkeye spoke Russian.

Hawkeye laughed. "Yeah, 'Tasha said you'd take it well. She'd have been here herself, but, well... duty called."

"Duty my ass," Fury muttered just loud enough to be heard.

"Natasha is the Widow?" Piotr half-asked.

"Three times over," Hawkeye confirmed. "I'm Clint, by the way."

"How do you do," Piotr muttered with a nod. He felt disconnected, removed, as if the scene in front of him was taking place without him actually being there. The initial shock was fading, however, and, like a radio being tuned in, the words exchanged became less abstract. In Fury's great plan, he was going to be the junior partner to Hawkeye and the Widow, trained in skills complementary to theirs.

"-- since Jack Hart got himself lit up in the Sudan," Hawkeye -- Clint -- was saying. "We can handle the quick-'n'-messy, but 'Tasha's not interested enough to learn the hard stuff and I'm usually the long man. If we're going to be a trio..."

"Do you have a preference, Piotr?" Fury looked over; he and Clint had been talking to each other and had oriented themselves along that axis. "You could probably do Sapper School as is." "That would be fine," he said. It sounded better than the other options, most of which involved computers; he didn't like the abstraction that came with doing damage remotely to people, places, and things rendered theoretical by being reduced to transmitted bytes and flashing cursors. "I have some experience with knocking things over and I am mostly protected from my own mistakes."

Clint laughed. "Yeah, I suppose so."

Fury wanted to send Piotr through SHIELD's basic training, but Clint argued against it. He and Natasha would have to spend months re-training him, Clint protested, and that would lose valuable time as well as inculcating habits and instincts that would be hard to override. "They don't teach subtlety in boot camp."

Ten minutes later, after Fury had refused to commit to anything more than taking it under advisement, Clint looked at his watch and stood up.

"Gotta go," he said, tapping the watch with his index finger. "I promised I'd be home before Spongebob and if I miss this shuttle... I disappoint them enough as it is."

Goodbyes were said and, after Clint left, Fury turned back to face Piotr.

"What do you have that the twins want so much?" Piotr asked before Fury could say anything. "This... agreement you have with them. Something for something -- they gave me to you, you gave something to them. You can't stop them, so they don't need your approval and there must be easier sources for weapons than diverting stores from SHIELD, so what is it?"

The older man chuckled. "You haven't figured that out yet?" He smiled and tilted his head slightly. "And here we've been talking you up as such a bright boy."

Fury leaned forward, as if divulging a confidence.

"This is going to be your first lesson in Black Ops, Rasputin," he said, not unkindly. "So take notes. In the real world, nothing is for free. Nothing. Every little bit you get comes with a price. You want a beer, you pay the bartender. You want a nice lawn, you pay the gardener. You want to keep the country safe, you have to pay for that, too. Except the transactions aren't as neat and you don't want them turning on the AmEx bill. You, Clint, and Natasha are part of my secret slush fund for when I need to pay cash.

"Purchases like these, you have to think long and hard before making them -- whether or not what you're getting is worth the price, or whether you can afford to buy it... or whether you can afford not to."

"_Realpolitik_," Piotr agreed. "I get that, but..."

"Something for something. What are Wanda and Pietro Lehnsherr offering up for sale? A little information and a lot of stability. They're killers and they're probably a little crazy. But they're not crazy like their father was. And they're not _nearly_ as dangerous as some of the bastards who are lurking around waiting to take their place should they fall.

"SHIELD -- hell, _any_ policing agency -- isn't ready to take on an army of mutant terrorists who can't be taken down by their own hubris. Look at that clusterfuck with Proteus; it's easy to say that the X-Men are screwing up, but only a fool thinks that a company of SHIELD troopers would do better. Super-powered bad guys are bad enough, but _organized_ super-powered bad guys? We're not ready for that sort of evolution right now. So since we can't fight it, the only thing we can do is keep it from being kick-started in the first place."

"You're buying the devil you know," Piotr murmured. He had overlooked the notion of information as currency as being too obvious, but just because it was practical didn't mean it was unreasonable. The Brotherhood and SHIELD lived in different worlds that only tangentially overlapped and information crucial to one was only a curiosity to the other; the twins needed names and places of rival mutant activist (terrorist) groups and their most violent opponents while SHIELD, an organization responsible to the government that funded it, needed ways and means to keep civilians safe and their own overseers happy. Nick Fury had a President and a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to report to and public relations to keep up even before he so much as changed the color of the buttons on the SHIELD uniform.

Fury nodded. "More or less. The twins are using the Brotherhood as a vehicle for vengeance, which is a waste of time and energy on their part, but it's their energy to waste and it's a mission that is lot less threatening to national security than if they were using that energy for fulfilling any plans of world domination. So we let them blow up a few anti-mutant groups and do a little creative damage -- most of which is on our wish list to Santa, by the way -- and, in return, we don't have to worry about them driving Sentinels into Buckingham Palace or knocking over the Washington Monument. And as long as _they_'ve got the Brotherhood in hand, that means nobody else is leading it in more... unsavory directions. Better the Lehnsherrs than a whole lot of other characters -- and they know how we feel."

Piotr leaned back thoughtfully. He still didn't know why the twins had sought to trade him to SHIELD. What did Fury want him for? What sort of shadowy business transaction would explain his interest in a mutant with no inside information? Or was that a bluff? Did Fury think that he knew more than he was letting on and hope to draw more flies with honey than vinegar? He couldn't possibly know about Magneto, but...

Fury stood up. "I have to go. I'd see about transferring you to a less... Spartan residence, but you'll probably be shipping out tomorrow or the day after. Rudelsky here will put in the order that you're safe to be left with silverware."

"Wait," Piotr called out as Fury turned to leave. "Iceman..."

"Robert Drake is in the PICU at New York Presbyterian," Fury answered, shaking his head in disgust. "He'll make it, but it'll be a long time before he's walking again. With a little luck, his parents will take him home and keep him as far away from Charles Xavier as possible."

"Thank you." Piotr frowned, pleased that Bobby was alive and would recover, but saddened all the same. That the injuries had come in the line of duty, as it were... Piotr didn't think Bobby would quit because of them, or that he'd let his parents take him away from it. For all of his griping about charitable works and public appearances and PR stunts, Bobby loved the life, loved the bit of celebrity, and (sadly) loved the danger. It would be up to Xavier to force Bobby away from the team and, despite all of the threats to do just that, despite everyone's growing sense that Bobby was too young for this sort of life in more ways than just years, Piotr doubted that the Professor would push hard enough to keep Bobby from coming back. The Professor believed enough in his Dream to sacrifice his own family, abandoning his wife and son, for the cause. That sort of dedication... someone else's son was but a small price. Piotr couldn't accept that collateral damage so easily, which was partly why he was at the Triskelion instead of the mansion.

Fury was already halfway out the door when Piotr's attention returned to him and he watched the door close automatically behind him.

"Piotr Rasputin, agent of SHIELD," he said quietly to himself, testing out the words. They hadn't seemed real before, during his isolated trials. It wasn't that he hadn't believed Fury, he had -- at least as a threat, but that he'd never imagined being put in a situation to actually _represent_ SHIELD in any capacity; his imagination had run toward guarding way stations out in Alaska or some similarly far-flung low-level outpost where the color of the uniform and the name on the insignia were irrelevant. He hadn't envisioned being anything other than a grunt in a dark blue uniform, let alone becoming one of the chosen few.

He had no delusions about what that 'chosen' future held; Clint and Natasha did not perform the sort of tasks one got medals for doing well. Take away the advanced technology, better-grade weapons, and more exotic locales and what they did would probably not differ much from what he had done for Boris. Fury could talk all he wanted about Piotr's intelligence, but he knew that Fury was just as interested -- if not more so -- in the fact that he was capable of using lethal force without falling to pieces afterward. The potential of a renewable resource like that may have been enough to warrant the twins serving him up to Fury as a prize.

Piotr looked down at the stack of newspapers by his feet. Alex would be following the Proteus mess closely, Piotr suspected, pretending he was unaffected when he eventually got in contact with his brother. He'd have had an interesting reaction to the knowledge that the twins and SHIELD were in a marriage of convenience. Maybe he would have even predicted it -- "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you," he'd said more than once when Piotr would tell him he was chasing shadows. But Alex was right, at least in this case; the shadows had solid forms behind them. Nick Fury choosing Wanda and Pietro as the least of all evils...

The gentle, concerned smile of Erik Lehnsherr haunted him. He had initially not said anything about Magneto because he'd wanted him as his ace in the hole, the card he could pull out if Fury had threatened to turn him over to Xavier -- or worse. And now... knowing that Magneto was still alive was still a valuable piece of information (at least as long as Lehnsherr stayed where -- and how -- he was), both in dealing with Fury and in negotiating with the twins. Both sides would pay dearly for that information and, until something else came along, that was his one and only bargaining chip.

When the Professor had first brought him to Central Park to see Lehnsherr, Piotr had been horrified. But it had been a transitional sort of horror, a scary-movie kind of creepiness that would pass with time. Xavier had done this thing and, while it had questionable ethics, it was over and (at least as far as his own abilities went) irreversible. And the world _was_ a safer place with Magneto gone, even if it had cost a moral compromise. At least this one had greater benefits than feeding his family without a double-shift at the factory. By showing Piotr what he'd done, Xavier had made him a part of that compromise... and he'd accepted that shared burden by not telling anyone else. What was one more compromise in a life full of them?

Piotr wished he could have someone to talk to, someone he could trust. Because he was starting to doubt his own motives again and question his own judgment and that was no way to live by one's wiles. He was still protecting Xavier and his choices for the sole purpose of keeping his own options open. It felt selfish and duplicitous, but he neither trusted anyone else with the information -- nor with what they would do to him once the secret was no longer his alone.

Standing up, as if he could leave the quandary behind him on the couch, Piotr walked over to the window-wall. The sun was set only barely, the sky a vivid rainbow of pinks and oranges and greens and purples fading into blue. There was ferry traffic and a couple of patrol boats, traffic helicopters and airplanes coming in low en route to Newark airport and he could see the red and white lights of rush hour traffic backed up on some road in New Jersey and he lost himself in the bustle of it all until the doorbell chimed and dinner was brought in, along with a box of utensils and snacks to make the kitchen less bare.


	8. Layer Cake

  


Acts of Contrition: Chapter Seven 

* * *

"That's three in a row, Master Drake," Henry McCoy announced triumphantly as he put down the video game controller. "And now I claim my prize." 

"Oh, no," Bobby sighed, flopping back heavily into the couch as his controller fell to his feet.

Scott looked up at the sudden movement in his peripheral vision. He was on the other couch, iPod resting on his belly and magazine in hand, with his socked feet up on pillows and his back to the giant television screen.

Sitting there while the guys staged what felt like the entire NFL season on the X-Box was a concession, a compromise between being accessible to his teammates and satisfying his desire to be alone. There was no true privacy in his life, not after Jean had threaded a psionic bond into the fabric of his mind, but he could still enjoy a believable illusion of it. And sometimes he just got... _tired_ of being relied upon for answers or entertainment or guidance or attention and the need to keep the rest of the world at bay grew unbearable. But he wasn't able to indulge himself as often as he used to; not since Piotr had disappeared. He hadn't realized how central the big Siberian had been to the team's chemistry... no, that wasn't true. He had realized. Perhaps it was better to say that he hadn't acknowledged it or acknowledged how much he relied upon it.

"Three out of five?" Bobby asked, still not budging from his sprawl. The song currently playing had a long and quiet intro and Scott could hear him clearly, although the iPod wasn't set at a very high volume. If he'd put it up loud enough to drown out the video game and the taunting, he'd go deaf. Instead, it was at a volume that would blur Bobby's and Henry's words into incomprehensible sounds, a white noise that could get tuned out.

"I think not," Henry replied primly, clapping his hands together and rubbing them in anticipation. "Your options: you must either read _Heart of Darkness_ or you have my next week of dish duty."

"Oh, _man_," Bobby sighed incredulously and Scott chuckled. Leave it to Henry to get done what the Professor couldn't. Bobby had gotten Jean to rent _Apocalypse Now Redux_ and the entire group had watched it together. The discussion during the bonus material had gotten around to the story's source and Xavier had suggested that Bobby read the Conrad novel. Bobby, to nobody's surprise, had declined vehemently and with distaste.

"That's not a fair choice," he finally said, carefully propping himself up on his elbows and gesturing with his head toward the crutches leaning on the armrest nearest him. "I still can't stand for as long as it takes to do the dishes."

The hard casts had come off three weeks ago; Bobby got around with a walking cast on his right leg and a brace on his left knee. The rest of his injuries were more or less healed the ribs and shoulder were coming along nicely, the last exam had shown his lungs to be normal and the bruising that had turned him more purple than white had faded almost completely. There were scars, both inside and out, but Bobby was rebounding with astonishing resiliency and speed.

"I'm not up for another three weeks," Henry offered. "And I did spot you two touchdowns per game on account of your wrist. Although I must say, I am rather astounded at the lengths you'd go to avoid reading."

"I read," Bobby protested sourly. "Do you think I could get it as an eBook?"

Henry's undoubtedly put-upon response was drowned out by the swell of electric guitar and Scott went back to his magazine.

Bobby had been back with them for a month; the Drakes had initially refused to allow Bobby to return at all had, in fact, threatened to sue the Professor after their attempts to get him arrested on child endangerment charges had failed but had been persuaded to relent by a face-to-face meeting with a very humbled and contrite Charles Xavier. That meeting had taken much patience and negotiating; the Drakes had had police guards to keep the X-Men away back when Bobby had first been hurt and the Professor had been privately anxious about bringing Bobby back to the mansion and its advanced technology. It was that last, Scott suspected, that finally swayed the Drakes. They understood that Bobby would recover faster at the Mansion because of its facilities; that Bobby would be emotionally better off with his friends and mutant family had not entered the Drakes' minds. Bobby's eagerness to stay and his rapid improvement once he'd been brought back to the mansion seemed to validate whatever the Professor had done to convince the Drakes to change their minds and drop their lawsuit... the lawsuit that could have been very dangerous to all mutants and not just the X-Men. Again, it had been a matter of waiting for the Drakes to stop being angry and start seeing what their anger could do to their son.

"Naaaaargh!" Bobby howled and it was all Scott could do to not jump off the couch and reach for his glasses to whip them off. Henry was doing some dorky-looking dance while still seated and Scott realized that the video controller was being held by his feet. "You did _not_ just do that!" Bobby cried out.

"Double or nothing, Master Drake?" Henry sat primly, fairly glowing in self-satisfaction. Scott groaned and leaned back again.

The damage done by Proteus and by the X-Men fighting Proteus was extensive and multifaceted and only kept from reaching a fatal-to-the-team level by the fact that the general populace still didn't know that Proteus was really David Xavier. The mutants-chasing-mutant aspect had polarized the global reaction to _homo superior_; very few people anywhere were ambivalent or unconcerned about 'the mutant question' anymore. The Professor's proposals for a new world order incorporating mutants had become lightning rods, attracting extremists from both ends of the spectrum and generating tons of articles, journals, television specials, and a documentary that won three movie festival awards despite being produced in only two weeks and comprised almost exclusively of lies and innuendo. Alex, typically, had loved it; he'd downloaded a pirated version and burned a copy to CD and sent it to Westchester as an example of successful mass-media propaganda.

The team had its own recovery to engineer; the damage closer to home was not so clinically assessed or easily repaired. The Professor had been shattered by events; the obliteration of his ideological campaign, the gruesome and costly reminder of what mutants were capable of doing when unleashed, the public hammering the X-Men took for their supposed ineptitude at apprehending Proteus, the personal damage the team took... it had been too much for him. For weeks, the team did not train or go out on missions and Scott had tried to voice his own idea that they'd do best to return to both as quickly as possible, but Xavier had resisted his subtler efforts and Scott had not wanted to risk an open disagreement. Perhaps Jean was right and it was his own misplaced guilt speaking; the protracted chase of Proteus, the loss of Piotr, and the injury to Bobby weighed heavily on him and he _hated_ being idle. A good leader does so by example, however, and it did none of the others any good to see Scott second-guessing either himself or the Professor while the Professor was still so visibly unable to forgive himself.

The Professor was looking for Piotr, too, and had been since they'd realized he'd disappeared. Xavier had immediately dispatched Scott and Jean to search after him, but they'd had two days before being recalled to fight Proteus and they'd come up with nothing beyond what STRIKE had told them Piotr had checked in at Heathrow for a flight to New York, but had never boarded. Airport security cameras picked up no trace of him and neither MI5 who'd taken Piotr's disappearance as a threat to national security, although the team didn't know whether they considered Piotr or his possible abductors to be the threat nor STRIKE had been able to provide any updates. They weren't even sure if Piotr had left the team voluntarily or not, although as time went by and days turned into weeks into months and there had been no sign of him, even SHIELD was starting to agree that a voluntary departure was looking less than likely. Scott himself had been sure from the start; no matter how miserable Piotr had been and, in hindsight, they'd all agreed that he'd been out-of-sorts in the days before his disappearance it was inconceivable that Piotr would choose to stay away from the team as they fought Proteus. He'd never willingly abandon them to such a danger like that, certainly never after Bobby had gotten hurt.

"If you keep this up, Bobby, you're going to end up doing my chores until you leave for college," Henry warned with a gleeful laugh. "That, or you'll be the best read young man in Westchester County."

Bobby made indeterminate noises of protest. "You're using your mutation," he groused, gesturing at Henry's hands. "You've got freaky reflexes. This is an unfair competition. I'm voiding all of it."

"That's patently untrue," Henry retorted with melodramatically bruised feelings.

Bobby was perhaps taking Piotr's disappearance hardest of all. At first, he'd been furious and spiteful, convinced that Piotr had run away from the team and abandoned _him_, and hadn't even wanted to hear Piotr's name spoken. But that had been early on, when he'd been so angry and frustrated at his own life his injuries, his parents' protectiveness and desire to keep him from the X-Men, the angry headlines and news broadcasts and once those issues had settled down, so had his ire. The hatred had transformed into fear for Piotr's safety and then some sort of guilt, as if there had been some way he himself might have saved Piotr from whatever fate he'd met. Bobby had cried piteously after STRIKE had come to interview him; he'd been unable to tell them much of anything about Piotr's actions that evening and the agent had expressed his frustration.

"I'm appealing to our Fearless Leader here." Henry pointed a ugly-yet-elegant foot toward him.

"Your fearless leader doesn't care," Scott muttered loud enough to be heard, annoyed at having to give up the pretense of not hearing them bicker.

Once upon a time, it would have been Piotr who would have calmed Bobby's fears and frustration, but Piotr wasn't there and was in fact the source of the trouble. And the rest of the team was at a loss for what to do. None of them had hung out with Bobby that had been Piotr and, to a lesser extent, Logan and none of them had any insight into his torment.

Finally, it had been Henry who had stepped into the breach, tackling Bobby's not-so-unreasonable fear that Piotr had been taken by a Weapon X-type group and been experimented upon. Henry never explained what he'd said in those long talks with Bobby and Bobby would go so far as to deny their existence, but the end result was a newborn friendship between the two, Henry becoming the surrogate brother that Piotr had been and giving Bobby someone to confide in again. Ororo hadn't seemed to mind she still found Bobby largely annoying, but she and Henry were past the phase of their relationship where they needed to constantly be in each other's presence and if Henry wanted to spend time with Bobby, then she didn't have to be there all the time, too. And Henry _did_ seem to want to spend time with Bobby; the two were developing a much less formal sibling-like relationship than Bobby had had with Piotr, whom Bobby had never successfully gotten to regularly play video games or watch baseball.

"Bobby, was this your idea or Henry's?"

"To play or to bet?"

"Either." Nobody in the room doubted that both had been Bobby's suggestions.

"Henry wouldn't bet money," Bobby replied after a pause spent trying to get out from under the inevitable logic of where the conversation was heading. "I had no other collateral."

"Well, then you're just screwed, aren't you?" Scott asked, picking up his magazine again and ostentatiously fiddling with the play list on his iPod.

"No fair," Bobby muttered. "Double or nothing? One last time?"

"You've run out of time," Ororo announced from behind the couch. She was wearing her dress a deep blue silk shift that made her look older and more voluptuous than her everyday clothes and her makeup was already applied, although her hair was still wrapped in a towel. She leaned forward to twist her fingers around an errant lock of Henry's hair. "Why aren't you three hoodlums getting dressed? We have to go in an hour."

The invitation had come hand-delivered: Professor Charles Xavier and his students were cordially invited to an evening's entertainment at the New York Chapter of the Hellfire Club.

"We're _guys_," Bobby informed her with an impatient sigh. "We don't take three hours to get ready."

Why they had been invited why _anyone_ would want to be seen in the company of the Professor and his mutant pupils not a half-year after Proteus had scorched his way through Western Europe was unknown. But Professor Xavier, far from being suspicious, was almost giddy with anticipation, a pleasure the others had found infectious, save Scott. The Hellfire Club was old money and older power and with its support, tacit or explicit, anything was possible.

Ororo sniffed and ignored him. "Hank, you should go get into the shower at least. Two hairdryers and you're still going to be complaining about wet fur."

Henry frowned agreement and untucked his leg. Scott had initially been surprised at Henry's enthusiasm for the soiree; he'd seen Henry's despondency and self-consciousness the latter of which had only dimmed, but not faded and hoped that this newfound zest for life was genuine and not a ploy to get concerned teammates to leave him alone.

"But we're not done with the game!" Bobby squeaked in protest.

"Duck-boy, you are so far in hock we're gonna have to mortgage your first-born to get you out of debt." Ororo shook her head in amusement. "Your next community service project's going to be at Gambler's Anonymous."

Henry put the controller down on the floor and stood up, rolling his neck as he did so. Scott pulled his headphones off and turned off the iPod and swung his feet off the couch. They had more than an hour even if they weren't aiming for 'fashionably late'; Ororo had a phobia about being late and never appreciated that the time listed on a party's invitation was a suggested guideline and not the absolute deadline by which one must arrive.

Bobby sighed dramatically and reached for his crutches. "We're gonna end up sitting around in those monkey suits for an hour while the girls get ready," he groused. He batted the controller by his ankle away with the rubber foot of his left crutch and took his first steps toward the door behind Scott.

"The back elevator," Scott said, holding out a hand to stop Bobby's progress. The front elevator was closest to where they were now and where Bobby's room was on the third floor, but the walk to the further elevator was exercise and Bobby was still limited in what he could do down in the basement. He half-expected Bobby to protest, but apart from a muted whine there was nothing and Bobby executed a graceful turn on his good foot and headed toward the front staircase.

Ororo and Henry were already on their way out of the room. "Cripple coming through," he announced as he aimed himself toward them. "Make way, make way."

* * *

_If I'd known you were going to stick to the wall all night_, Jean murmured in his head, amusement dripping like water, _I'd have brought a spatula._

Scott rolled his eyes and hoped that the reaction carried over the psionic bond. The ballroom was full of people and warmly lit by chandeliers with real candles in them; his spot by one of the open French doors was one of the few comfortable temperature zones in the massive room. He sipped his scotch and listened to the muted sounds of Manhattan streets play their counterpoint to the musicians in the far corner. Every once in a while, a silver tray with canapés was paused in front of him so that he could select from exquisite delicacies that all tasted good and could only be occasionally identified.

_I've done the press agent thing already_, he said after Jean's mental touch didn't diminish. _Answered everyone's stupid questions, placated everyone's asinine fears, and did my best to assure the rich and powerful that we're more than happy to be the little poodles sitting on their laps getting scratched behind the ears._

_Jesus, Scott._ Jean sounded offended. _Project much?_

He didn't say anything in return, knowing that Jean was annoyed with him and he'd probably only make it worse. She had very much looked forward to this evening and they'd already had chilly moments when he'd been accused of 'sucking all the fun out of her life' by being unable to muster any complementary enthusiasm.

Instead, he looked out on to the street. East 64th was the primest of prime real estate for the upper crust of New York Society, smack dab in the middle of the part of the Upper East Side where residences were inherited, domestic servants omnipresent, and everyone dressed like they were straight out of the fashion magazines even when they were just going to the Starbucks on the corner. The street was empty now except the occasional cab speeding down the empty street; what noise there was came from Madison Avenue on the next corner. The doors of the ballroom opened on to tiny faux balconies, the railings covered in ivy and effectively hiding the room from view from below.

They'd been fetched from the mansion by limousine, awkwardly settling themselves inside the big car, careful and stiff in their unfamiliar finery. They'd ridden in limos before, in London, but that had been as a convenience and they'd been in uniform, not dolled up and pretending that they were entitled to such frippery. Henry had made a joke about reliving his senior prom, but it had fallen flat as he was the only one who had ever been to one.

Jean and the Professor had been the only ones not visibly uncomfortable, looking pleased and _content_ as the limo sped down I-95 toward the Triborough Bridge. The Professor was not born to such wealth; his ease was acquired through experience and exposure. But Jean _was_. The Grey family had had money long before Jean's father had made his own fortune through some confluence of academia and popular culture; Jean had had a nanny and a closet full of fancy dresses that each cost more than the stipend Scott's foster parents got to purchase his clothes for the year. She didn't know how to cook because there had always been one in her parents' employ; when Scott had first arrived, Jean was still mastering such tasks as vacuuming and laundry. She'd been embarrassed, telling him that the chores were effective tools by which to hone her telekinesis, but Jean was a terrible liar not to mention a disastrous cook and mildly incompetent laundress.

_I'm sorry you feel uncomfortable_, Jean said gently, almost as if she were talking a crazed man off a ledge, although it was really probably that she had decided he was frustrated and self-conscious and not being contrary just to piss her off. _We are who we are, Scott. But that doesn't mean we can't change. Look at 'Ro_ the mental image for where to look filled his mind's eye; he turned his head to see Ororo was standing at the apex of a semi-circle of Hellfire Club members, laughing easily at someone's joke. She held a champagne flute in her right hand, pinky extended, and looked every inch the African princess instead of the car thief who'd spent the five years before Xavier's roaming around the Bible Belt living on Cheetos and McNuggets.

_That's not what I want to adapt into_. He closed his eyes and turned back toward the open window and the gentle breeze. _I don't want to be a part of all this. I don't want to fawn and simper and..._

_And make connections that will ensure the future of our school_, Jean finished. He was oversimplifying and he knew it and she was calling him on it. _We're not here to make fishing buddies. We're here to be seen and make polite conversation and accept their acquaintanceships as the rewards due us. We are directly responsible for saving the lives of pretty much everyone in this room, Fearless Leader. This shindig? This is them admitting it. This is them allowing us entry into their world as something other than servants and faceless soldiers. And you're our commander. You're an officer and a gentleman now_.

He snorted in disbelief. He was an officer only in the loosest sense field command of the X-Men was not a ranked commission and carried very little in the way of either perquisites or respect from his nominal subordinates. And as well-mannered as he thought he was, tonight's elegance had proven that he was no gentleman and could never pass as one. Nor that anyone in the room would even indulge the pretense should he try. _I refuse to believe that Harry Leland sees me as anything other than a puppet in a freak show. A disposable puppet at that_.

Leland, tall and barrel-chested and possessing a booming voice, had commandeered him for almost the entire first half-hour of cocktails. The big man had spent a few minutes blasting him with questions, nodding at the answers he approved of and pursing his lips at the ones he didn't, and then brought him around to various groupings, introducing him around without letting Scott say much of anything at all except to answer questions. Before he lost his patience at being led around like a trained monkey, Scott had finally been handed a scotch, turned loose, and ignored ever since. Which suited him just fine.

_Oh, Scott_, Jean sighed, wistful and sad. _I wish you could see yourself the way everyone else does. You deserve to be here as much as anyone else in this room. There's no reason to feel as if any of this is beyond your reach_.

A waiter came by, holding out a tray half-filled with empty glasses. Scott downed the last bit of amber liquid and added his own, the uniformed man giving a quick bow and then departing.

Apart _from birth, breeding, and bank account_? This is why he loved Jean. For all of her own privilege, she was enough of a dreamer to honestly believe in the ideal of advancement on merit. And she believed he had some.

_Birth is accidental and the rest can be either faked or gotten_, Jean replied with a laugh, pleased at having gotten him out of his funk. _And now it's time to be seated for dinner. What table number did you get_?

Scott reached into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket to dig out the little card.

_Holy shit!_ Jean fairly yelled into his mind and Scott, watching a lissome blonde standing nearby blandly turn away what was obviously a prospective suitor, winced.

_What? What is it?_ Scott stood up and looked for where Jean was standing. He re-imagined the angle from which she'd sent him that view of Ororo and refracted back along that line of sight. Jean was standing with two gray-haired gentlemen and a tall woman of advanced years across the room, near a large plant. She was not facing Scott and what he could see was partially hidden, but he would know the graceful line of her back anywhere and remembered the rear half of her upswept hair from the fifteen times she'd asked him if any of the pins were showing.

_Near the table with the cheese_, she said with some urgency.

_I didn't get any cheese_, he retorted.

_Ten o'clock to Henry's noon_.

Henry was easy to spot, a big blue pile of gregariousness surrounded by a wide circle of audience. Slightly to the left were one bank of banquet tables and Scott scanned faces there. Many were recognizable and several more had been introduced to him earlier by Harry Leland and Scott tried to imagine whose presence could have set Jean off like that... Oh.

_What's Dr. McTaggart doing here_? The doctor stood steady and formidable despite her crutches, looking every bit the Scottish nobility that she was.

_I know she's probably a member of the London branch, but..._ Jean replied, sounding mystified. _But I can't imagine her being here tonight is any sort of accident._

Dr. McTaggart was actually rather tall for a woman and her head was inclined to talk to an unseen party, but at that angle her conversation partner was either extremely short or seated... "Oh, no," he murmured aloud. "That can't possibly be good."

The last time the Professor had seen his ex-wife, it had been at the funeral for Elisabeth Braddock. They hadn't said a word, had stood next to each other at the gravesite of one of their son's victims and ignored each other even though it was the first time they'd seen each other since Proteus had run rampant through Europe, since David Xavier had died. Since Scott had killed him.

_Should I go over or should I hide?_ he asked. _Does the Professor **want** us over there?_

_I don't know_, Jean admitted, a little panicked. _I can't hear him. He's blocking me out completely_.

The murmur had changed to a bustle as the crowd began to make their way out of the ballroom and toward the dining room. Scott looked around for his teammates. Ororo had her arm looped around the elbow of a much-older man whose name Scott couldn't recall, but was from a very old New York family Astors kind of old. Henry was laughing loudly at someone else's joke, his arm extended out to where Bobby was hobbling toward him. The two came together and Henry bowed down a little to whisper something into Bobby's ear and Bobby grinned broadly.

The Professor was visible now, the crowd by the buffet tables thinning out. He looked agitated, leaning slightly forward in his chair, hands gripping the armrests tightly, almost as if he were poised to rise. Scott put aside his own concern for whether Moira McTaggart would be upset to see her son's killer and walked toward them. Jean met him halfway there and they approached together; in the corner of his vision, he could see the others hovering at the rear of the exiting crowd.

"... and here are the prize turnips now," Dr. McTaggart was saying as they came within earshot, turning her head to give them a scathing look before turning back. "Will ye look at them differently now, Charlie? Not as your prized pupils, but instead for what they are? Of course ye won't. That'd mean giving up your own illusions, _Professor_."

She laughed, a bitter, sharp, ugly noise that distorted her face for a moment before it returned to its look of genteel politeness. "Enjoy your meal, children," she said pleasantly as she walked past them, the rubber tips of her elegant wood crutches making no noise on the parquet floor.

"Professor?" Scott asked carefully, watching Xavier watch Dr. McTaggart join the exiting crowd. He looked distant, the way he did when he was using his telepathy, and Scott looked over at Jean. Her head was cocked slightly, as if she was listening for something, but she turned to face him and smiled ruefully.

"What's going on?" he asked her.

Jean shrugged. "MoiDr. McTaggart must have said something."

"Obviously." Scott rolled his eyes.

"Come," Professor Xavier said in a normal voice, wheeling himself forward. "Let's not hold up the dinner."

Scott scurried to catch up and took the handlebars of the wheelchair. Hands freed, Xavier pulled his seating card out of his breast pocket and Scott looked around for some indication of which table was which. The Professor's table was toward the rear in the middle and Scott was not surprised to see Harry Leland, Winston Frost, Sebastian Shaw and the other big names already seated there. He steered the wheelchair to an empty place left without a chair that had been marked for Xavier's use, nodded to the others, and went back to where he'd seen his own table. The seating arrangement seemed to be such that none of them were seated together and he could hear Jean's concern vaguely in the back of his mind. It wasn't at the seating arrangements per se, but at the growing sense nothing more than a hunch that something was not quite right. The spreading out of the team throughout the diners was ostensibly for socialization purposes, but could just as easily be to divide and conquer.

_It's only for dinner,_ he pointed out for his own benefit as much as Jean's, none too thrilled himself about sitting by himself at a table full of strangers when his hackles were raised.

_You're not alone,_ Jean replied with a mental caress. _I'll keep my eyes peeled, too._

_I don't want..._ Scott bridled, irritated at the thought that he needed his hand held. _We're so used to seeing conspiracies everywhere. I don't want to start seeing them where they aren't._

There was only one empty seat at his table, so Scott headed straight for it. He'd half-expected a seat at some Hellfire Club version of the kiddie table, but it was quite the opposite. Robert Parkman was there, along with Brooks Dobson and several others Leland had deemed it important for him to meet. He exchanged pleasantries with his neighbors and nodded greeting to Dobson, who was seated almost directly across the large table.

_What's your brother always telling you?_ Jean asked ascerbicly. _'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you'? Something's going on here tonight. Something we're not supposed to know about._

_You're not making any sense._ A virtual army of waitstaff bringing in the first course kept him from either looking at her or looking for the others. _If we weren't supposed to know, why would we be here where we could accidentally figure it out? They know you're a telepath and they probably suspect the Professor._

_What if we're the focus? There are psi-shielded rooms here._

Scott kept himself from frowning and politely answered Mrs. Parkman's questions about the school's curriculum. She was pleased to know that Latin was being taught, although Scott was not going to tell her that only Piotr had ever tried to learn it. _You mean like us being the butt of some elaborate joke?_

_Moira McTaggart called us prize turnips,_ Jean reminded him.

_Moira McTaggart is the Professor's very embittered ex-wife,_ Scott retorted. _She was resentful and angry before all the crap went down with Proteus._

Waiters came by to open and pour the wine bottles set up in an intricate centerpiece and Scott was surprised to see the first glass poured not for Parkman or Dobson, but instead for a man who couldn't have been much older that himself. _Who is that?_

_Shinobi Shaw,_ Jean answered, accepting the change in topic for what it was. _Son and heir of Sebastian Shaw. You've got Shaw Junior, Dobson, Parkman, and Holmeier? They put you at the power-players table, Fearless Leader. I'm stuck here with catamites and dowagers. Be proud. And don't eat your salad with your dessert fork._

Scott looked down at the table service and nearly choked. Three forks, three wine glasses, and he was only positive that he could discern between the teaspoon and the knife. He felt Jean's amusement.

_Outside fork first, babe_, she said soothingly. _And the big wine glass is for water._

Dinner passed uneventfully and without either a flatware crisis or any more nervous comments from Jean. Scott found himself discussing American isolationism with Arthur Holmeier, who only happened to be a retired ambassador, and siding with Shinobi Shaw in a gentle debate over mutant rights in the workplace. Jean periodically checked in with him, reporting on the doings of their scattered teammates and that there seemed to be no current of thought of anything that might be an ambush.

Coffee and tea were served at the tables and, according to the card that had listed the evening's menu, cognac and cordials would be served in the ballroom. Scott nearly dropped his teacup after a sharp spike of surprise came down the telepathic link.

_What is it?_ he asked, setting his cup down gently in its saucer. The tea service was so delicate as to be almost translucent in his hands and he cringed in anticipation of breaking it with his thick-fingered clumsiness.

_You might want to get ready to leave,_ Jean warned. _The Professor is having it out with Sebastian Shaw._

He bit into a cookie and looked over toward where Xavier was sitting. The Professor seemed to be engaged in a conversation with Winston Frost and Shaw was across the room staring angrily at the floor while someone Scott didn't recognized was talking to him _You can hear them?_

_Any telepath in the room can hear them,_she replied.

_Are there any? Besides you?_ It was something he should have been more mindful of; Alex always made such a point of emphasizing how diverse the ranks of the Friends of Humanity and other such groups actually were, how many members of societies like the Hellfire Club were covert or not so covert sponsors of anti-mutant factions. But there was also a flip side and at least a few of the people here had to be mutants and, in turn, psionic mutations weren't rare.

There was a pause and Scott could feel a distance on their link, a separation that quickly closed. _One, I think, maybe two psis. At least one is an empath, but I can't get a read on who. Either their shields are really good or they're very weak... Oh, Jesus._

_What?_ Scott asked in anxious frustration. _Can't you patch me in to the conversation through the link?_

He could almost feel Jean's effort.

_... and I refuse to accept that your funding was nothing more than a charade, a **cover** for your traitorous acts._

Scott rubbed his ear out of instinct as the Professor's angry voice was so loud in his mind.

_Accept or don't accept, Charles. Don't let your hubris blind you to the truth now that you have sought it out. Your **school** wasn't the goal of our project to start with and our focus has not shifted; your activities are still necessary, but don't think that you exist for any other purpose than diversionary._

Shaw's mental voice was harsh and ill-modulated; it took time to cultivate a sophisticated tone once a 'headblind' person learned to speak telepathically.

_We are not your circus clowns, Shaw._

_Dear man, that is precisely what you are. Dancing bears, chorus girls, whatever your euphemism of choice that is what you are. That is all that you are. You are paid to keep the world's attention on you through your antics, no matter what you tell yourself and your precious pupils. The Hellfire Club is not interested in your ideas for reshaping the world in anyone's image. We are the most powerful men on Earth, Charles, and the world is already in our image._

Scott heard a faint buzz and it wasn't coming from the telepathic link. There seemed to be a collective gasp of pain in the room and, suddenly, people started standing up. Shinobi Shaw stood, as did most of those seated at Xavier's table. Looking around the room, several others were standing as well. Those seated were looking... _dazed_, as if they'd been drugged. (_Telepathically induced hypnotic suggestion,_ Jean whispered along the link. _They can't hear or see a thing and they won't notice anything when they wake up._)

_These are the faces of the future, Shaw,_ Xavier's voice was cold with fury. _These are the Hellfire Club's greatest treasure and greatest secret. How many of these mutants have gone public with their powers?_

Scott looked around again. Both Shaws were mutants? Harry Leland as well? He met Ororo's curious stare from a few tables away and gestured for her to stay where she was.

_Don't you dare threaten me, Xavier,_ Shaw growled. _I will personally destroy you and everything you stand for._

_And destroy yourself in the process?_ Xavier sounded confident and almost smug.

_You weren't listening,_ Shaw replied with a sneer. _We are the most powerful **men** on Earth, not just the most powerful mutants. We don't need a new world order so that we can accede to the fore. We already have control. We can survive anything._

_We shall see_," the Professor murmured as he pulled his wheelchair back from the table. Scott felt something like a snap in his head, like a door closing, and realized that that last comment hadn't been for Shaw's consumption or for his own.

_Come, my students_, Xavier said in a voice that was so at odds to the tone he'd taken with Shaw that Scott could only blink and stare. The Professor obviously didn't want the rest of the team to be aware of what had just transpired and Scott assumed that he would explain everything to everyone later. _Our time here is done._

Scott stood and walked around his table, past Shinobi Shaw, who did not move more than his head to follow Scott's progress. Scott wondered if any of the standing realized what was going on, if they could figure out that they were all mutants together. A few feet from where Bobby was waiting for him to catch up, a pretty blonde woman about Henry's age stood watching him pass with frank curiosity. He returned the gaze, albeit through his dark red glasses, and was relieved to see the lack of fear there. At least until he saw that it wasn't just a lack of fear it was calculation and a disturbing coldness.

They were quiet until they'd retrieved their coats and stepped outside.

"Is it safe to ask what happened yet?" Ororo asked, looking at Scott.

"Our entry into polite society would seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot," Henry mused, undoing his bowtie. "Which would be a shame. Up until the Great Staring Match, I was having quite a good time."

"Dude, you were a mega-babe-magnet," Bobby said approvingly. "Of course, the babes were all older than my _mom_..."

Scott was about to ask the Professor about what had gone on, but before he could speak, he heard Xavier's voice in his head.

_Not now, Scott. Not here. Let them distract themselves; there's no need to concern the others over what occurred. As far as I'm concerned, this changes nothing for us. The Hellfire Club's folly shall be our gain. They have bought a revolution, no matter what they think._

* * *

Alison Blair, singer, traveler, mutant, and thief, walked down the block with the artlessly casual gait of a pretty girl who doesn't care who watches. The artlessness wasn't completely disingenuous and her motions had a softness and grace that couldn't be faked one did not spent as much time as she did in the spotlight up on stage and not know what every little gesture looked like and how it could be interpreted. Alison was a _performer_ and this was but another role on a bigger stage. The best front men only let you see what they wanted you to see, sleight of hand done in plain sight, magicians of a much subtler art than rabbits out of hats, and Alison felt the buzz that accompanied the start of a trick nobody would unravel. 

She went in to the Wendy's on the corner and got a milkshake that she was fairly sure had only a passing relationship with any dairy product. Sucking on the straw thoughtfully as she moved on toward the Abercrombie & Fitch window, she stopped next to the "No Food Allowed" sign, periodically shaking the cup to judge how much was left. Finally she saw the sky-blue van waiting at the light on the next corner. Walking over to the garbage pail to throw out the cup, she paused, looking thoughtfully at the bank right in front of her, as if she wasn't sure she had enough money to go shopping.

With the cup still in her hand she went toward the bank, smiling brightly at the woman who held the door open for her. Once inside, she could see that the sliding glass inner doors that separated the bank proper from the ATM vestibule were fully opened. The glass panels were probably bulletproof, but it didn't matter if they were made of adamantium if they were going to be reduced to decoration; they were too far apart for even a long-armed man to close them quickly. Just to be sure, however, she knelt next to one of them as if she were retying her shoelaces and, using her body to shield her actions from witnesses, held her hand over the bottom corner of the door. Focusing her light generating abilities hard enough to produce a high-heat blast was not as difficult as it used to be and, without having to worry about accuracy, she could easily melt the metal cornice enough for it to ooze toward the metal tracking on the floor. In a few minutes, the door would be unmovable.

Standing up, she arranged her clothes with her free hand, making sure to look relieved to see another garbage pail right next to her. She dumped her cup into the pail and then, as if remembering, opened up her purse and pulled out a Dunkin' Donuts bag and put it in the trash, too. Inside the white paper bag was a repeater so that the signal from the van would be amplified and Doug could work his magic.

It still boggled her that until the Sentinels had come, Doug Ramsay had only ever thought that he'd been gifted, exceptionally talented with mathematics and positively amazing with languages. A decorated CIA field agent, it had been a routine physical that had revealed the truth and he'd gone to ground after his station chief had called him back to get a follow-up test. That had been ten years ago. Alison had met him five years ago in a club in Amsterdam where he had been deejaying; she'd never seen a crowd so in tune with the mood and she'd never felt the music so purely in her life. And Doug's mutation was why.

On stage, he called himself DJ Cypher, as apt a description as any Alison had for his gifts. There wasn't a language he couldn't understand, a pattern he couldn't discern. He could perfectly transcribe any piece of music and translate any language. Mathematics and music had a long history together and so did psychology and music. Combining it all was easy if you were a universal translator and Doug, brilliant Doug, had become the master of that intersection. The DJ controlled the crowd in any hall, but Doug's control was one of mathematical precision and it was absolute. He could bring a rave to a near-frenzy, dangle them off the edge until they couldn't take it anymore, then bring them back safely over and over again and none the worse for wear except for the exhaustion. It had only been a matter of time before Doug, ever curious, decided to see who else it would work on.

Alison had been his first knowing test subject, a willing volunteer as always. She'd been unsurprised when he'd clapped headphones on her ears and she'd found herself whirled from anger to despair to the horniest she'd ever been in her life. What _had_ been surprising was the almost hypnotic control he'd had over her in a later test, a gentle, passive mind control that didn't feel forced but instead removed any real urge to defy the command. Once _that_ had been perfected, there wasn't a thing in the world that was beyond their imagination.

Once Doug had worked out a system of repeaters and amplifiers, straightforward robbery of stores was almost too easy. Banks, however, had the right amount of danger and excitement. Technology had made banks _lazy_ panic buttons for tellers, video cameras, and ATMs had all but eliminated the on-site guards and banks were content to recoup the losses afterward rather than fight the robbery at the instant it occured. Overcome the technology and where Doug's intellectual brilliance found its limit, Alison's own more literal kind carried the balance and the money was practically a gift.

Alison liked gifts. Gifts she received and gifts she gave and the ones that had no provenance beyond fate such as her own powers and _Doug_'s and the happy confluence of those powers that allowed the two of them a life dedicated to the best kind of hedonism, a life where generosity and pleasure were unfettered by mundane necessity. With Doug she traveled extensively and performed often and lived comfortably while doing both, turning her contentment into pleasure for others just as she converted sound into light. It was a good life, a happy life, and the occasional bank heist was both fuel and flavor.

This bank had been chosen for no other reason than that it was close to their route from St. Louis to Philadelphia, an unremarkable branch of a nation-wide bank that wasn't too far from an unremarkable exit off I-70. Their first visit to Richmond, Indiana's newest branch of Bank of America had confirmed a layout that was geared toward projecting a feeling of airiness and openness than actual security: large windows, counter glass that barely came up to shoulder level, and no security doors. It made for a branch that was friendly, clean, well-lit, and utterly defenseless.

Alison pulled out her iPod and opened up the little case for her headphones as she walked slowly toward the end of the queue for the tellers. Bette Midler was singing on the bank's stereo and, while Ali had much respect for The Divine Ms. M, there was a greater purpose in putting in the earbuds and calling up Doug's Stander Gang playlist.

Ever since her mutation had manifested, Alison had been acutely aware of sound and nothing, not Sentinels and not the death of rock on the radio, scared her as much as silence did. She liked being around noise living in cities, hanging in clubs, floating through life on a current of decibels. Here in this town, with its polite drivers and perimeter of farms and warehouses, was most definitely an ebb tide and Alison _itched_ for a plane overhead, a kid with a boombox, a bar full of patrons yelling at the football team playing on the television. Doug hated noise when he worked and she'd been unable to get her fix by either turning up the van's stereo or playing her iPod too loudly.

She could turn in up as loudly as she wanted here and she did, feeling the noise seep into her system like a drug she'd been craving.

Everyday white noise was a low-grade fix, a steady, gentle supply of energy that could be converted without ending up as the glowing girl shooting sparklers. It was like food and water, easily digested and processed by her body for whatever purpose it was needed. But jacking in like this, loud music as her only source, was a much sharper spike, like the rush of harsh whiskey on an empty stomach, a warm fire spreading in its wake and making her burn. It was impossible to keep still, so hard to keep the energy building inside actually inside, and Alison knew she was swaying slightly to the rhythm of the beat, coming a little more alive with each measure as the world got more vivid around her and she became so much more _aware_.

There were five people ahead of her on the line for the tellers, two men and three women and one of them had a baby carriage. None of them were looking at her directly, but all of them were aware of the exception to the placid stillness of the properly patient queue. The woman with the baby carriage looked over quickly and sharply, as if she were assessing the danger of a fidgety young woman to her precious child. Alison gave her a friendly smile, aware that it looked a little more blissed than benign and doubting that the mother with her Wal-Mart clothes and exhausted slouch remembered the difference if she'd ever known it.

Two tellers were at the counter, bored plastic smiles and eyebrows raised in helpful interest, with two more working in that open area on the other side of the low frosted glass and wood paneling. There was one bank manager, chatting amiably with the tellers in the rear, and the Personal Investment Advisor was not in today. There was nothing in their postures and expressions that spoke of alertness to or awareness of the possibilities of danger. The two women and one man in the rear laughed as they worked, gossip breaking up the monotony if not the efficiency.

There were four video cameras with views into the room one above the inner entry doors that swept from the manager's office to the gated door to the safe deposit box rooms and covered the queue and the counter from the right; one above that gated door that swept from the entry doors in a 90-degree arc that included most of the counter and all of the queue; and two on the other side of the counter, one to observe the tellers at the counter from behind and one to sweep over the doings at the stations against the far wall where money-counting and other accounting took place. The two that swept over the queue could be taken out at once and the one that covered the tellers from behind would follow.

Taking out the cameras was all just for precautionary reasons, of course. Alison had been able to create mirages for a year now and from there the ability to create and maintain a small, controlled one about her person had shortly followed. What had been hard, however, was to learn to 'pitch' her light so that she was rendered invisible to the cameras while maintaining a mirage that gently blurred her features to the naked eyes of witnesses.

Checking her watch, Alison hit the pause button on her music, closing her eyes to ease the transition. Over the bank's stereo, Bette Midler was no more and Rick Astley was now crooning and Alison pulled out her cell phone as it started to vibrate. '1 Astley or 2 PSisters + #queued?' the text message asked. She text-messaged back the reply, waited for his response ("cool"), and then put the phone away she wouldn't need it until she was at the front of the line and un-paused the iPod.

The play list was full of familiar music, high energy tracks that were among the ones she sang to on stage in the clubs alternating with old favorites, all encoded with confidence-boosting audio tracks that Doug had made just for her. She didn't need the aural hand-holding as much as she used to and Doug, ever cautious, was pushing for her to use them less. She did need the energy from the music, however, for the mirage, to take out the cameras and melt the door building an intense heat from light drew heavily on her stores, and to block out Doug's transmission once it started playing the encoded tracks over the bank's stereo system.

Not every song could be easily encoded. Dance tracks were better because the additional sounds were harder to notice, ballads and torch songs were next to impossible; she and Doug had spent months pulling together a play list of usable tracks to broadcast. It was heavily tilted towards eighties pop songs with their synthesizer accompaniments and seventies disco, upbeat music whose familiarity helped listeners relax enough to receive the subliminal boost.

Three people were left on line when she again hit pause to listen. Katrina and the Waves were walking on sunshine and Alison smiled in anticipation, still swaying to her own rhythm. This was the first of the encoded tracks, containing a milder suggestion than what would follow so that the change would not be too abrupt (Doug had given her _that_ look when she'd called it "a laxative"). Quickly going back to her own music, Alison closed her eyes and took a deep breath and focused on Paul Rodgers's voice.

It was five minutes until there was only one person left in front of her and Alison, feeling sated on her noisy high, pulled out her cell phone and dialed, letting it ring once before hanging up. The next song would start the process for real and it would be none too soon. Her fingers seemed to flex and ball on their own as she looked around, eager for something to distract her from the wait that now seemed interminable.

The manager had gone back to her office and the male teller in the rear was hunched his desk while the female teller was standing in front of the bill counting machine with her back to the counter and the customers. The two tellers at the counter were, on the surface, unchanged, but Alison, with her hyper-keen eyes and knowledge of what was happening, could see the differences. When she'd come in, they'd both been bright-eyed and chipper and projecting an aura of eagerness with all the force they could bring to muster. Now, however, they shared a mellower countenance, still smiling but less perkily and vivaciously so and, if anything, it made for a more genuine expression. They'd be feeling good, a pleasant buzz not unlike after sex, but without the fatigue. Compliance was more easily encouraged than forced.

When the last customer before her was called, she turned around and gestured vaguely toward both cameras. The sun shone brightly through the tall windows and glared off of the tile floor and with nobody else on line behind her and the tellers busy, if anyone noticed the orbs of light, they said nothing. By now, they were all used to her fidgeting and movement, visual white noise like the music in the background and equally hidden behind innocuous facades. Turning back and facing front, she smiled brightly at the clerk who summoned her forward.

Alison pulled out a passbook with a withdrawal slip. The slip was printed out by Doug and it was for 25,000 in cash. As the teller examined the passbook, which reported that the account had 37,342.82 as of the first of the month, Alison leaned forward. "You don't need to check the computer," she said helpfully and stifled a smile. She'd be incapable of looking anything but hungry right now if she allowed herself a grin.

Obi-Wan Kenobi couldn't have gotten a better response.

"No," the teller agreed slowly. The encoded music achieved malleability by creating a fogginess in the mind and Alison knew patience and gentleness were required. Sharp voices or other stresses could thin the fog or, in certain cases, break the fugue entirely. "I don't."

"Put it in this," she suggested to the teller as she handed over a folded-up dark green nylon duffel bag.

The teller took it, looking at it curiously as though she'd never seen such a thing before, and nodded. "It will take a minute or two," she warned, waiting for Alison to nod acceptance before turning away. Alison took the opportunity to knock out the remaining camera. The expenditure of light felt very good, the way using her powers usually did, and allowed her to bleed off some of the eagerness building within. She'd tweaked the mirage once she'd been called to the counter and maintaining it was enough of an effort to soothe the pressure of being an overcharged battery, but she was still full and still wired and maintaining her outward serenity was making her frustrated. Thankfully, the teller wouldn't be gone long; this close to noon and the cash would be ready and waiting in the locked holding area that was easier to access than the vault.

According to Doug, who always seemed to know such things, there were precisely two times a month that a bank branch in a mid-sized town could be expected to have so much ready cash and both times were paydays. In a small city where daily life was not expensive enough to really require credit cards and people still paid cash at restaurants and supermarkets, the banks had to be prepared. And Doug, a hacker of extraordinary deftness, knew precisely how much was to be delivered to this branch in anticipation of today's exchanges. Once they'd eyeballed the site, it had simply been a matter of showing up before lunch.

The teller returned carrying the now-full duffel and had to stand on her toes to reach over the frosted glass above the counter to hand over the bag.

"Thank you," Alison told her, accepting the bag and waiting for the teller to update the passbook. The duffel was heavy, but not unreasonably so. Nonetheless, she was careful to hold it in such a fashion that she could shrug her purse further on to her shoulder without jostling the earphone cord. "Have a good weekend."

Alison couldn't hear if the teller made a reply, turning away from the teller window and walked at a reasonable pace toward the door, measuring her stride in counts of One Mississippi, Two Mississippi to keep her paces unhurried and relaxed. Outside, Doug sat in the open side doorway of the idling minivan, eating a hamburger and it was all she could do not to run to him and scream in glee.

Doug looked up at her; a speaker rested next to him and Alison knew that if she took out her earphones, she'd hear music that would nauseate her. It was to keep people away and it worked like a charm; Doug himself had to wear earplugs or he'd vomit after five minutes. Alison smiled in answer to Doug's questioning look and she watched him get up, reach into the van's interior and turn off the music, put the speaker inside, and take out his earplugs. He turned back to face her and took the duffel from her, tossing it into the back without concern, then reached out to cup her face, knocking her earphones loose with the back of his hands.

The sudden deprivation of the loud sound and the encoded music was shocking to her system, like jumping in to cold water but less pleasant, and she closed her eyes and forced herself to focus on how the sudden quiet really wasn't there was the idling of the van's engine, the sound of a car's tires as it drove past them, the distant laughter of a pedestrian somewhere down the block, the whisper of Doug's breath against her face as he leaned down to kiss her forehead, her own heartbeat as it slowed down from the adrenaline high.

"Any trouble?" Standing so close, Doug's voice was a low rumble she felt more than heard and she shivered. She was tired, so very tired, even though she knew her store of energy was replete. It was psychological, she told herself, only in her mind, and that's why Doug wanted her to stop using the encoded music. Maybe she'd listen to him next time.

"Of course not," she replied, opening her eyes. Doug was watching her with something less than wariness and more than just casual interest. She smiled her brightest at him, knowing that he wasn't fooled but really not in the mood to hear his lecture on extended exposure to mood-altering sounds. "I'm really hungry, though."

Doug smiled indulgently, although his eyes showed his continued concern. He opened up the passenger-side door to the minivan, and Alison got in. He closed the door behind her then the side sliding door, taking another fast-food bag out out before he did and putting it in the garbage can. The second repeater, it would allow them to continue broadcasting the encoded music until they were more than a half-mile away.

Three hours, a lunch break, and a state line later, Doug's cell phone rang. The call was not unexpected and he answered it before it rang again.

"... Of course not... Because we are not amateurs... No, I don't think so. We will be in Europe for the next six weeks... Berlin would be better... That will be fine... I doubt it, but you're welcome to make the attempt... Goodbye, Miss Lehnsherr."

* * *

"Ist das alles, Herr Moran?" 

Alex Summers smiled pleasantly and nodded at the clerk, who had been more than helpful after having been dragged away from whatever she did when she wasn't required to handle requests by people who spoke not a shred of Slovakian and had to make do with a combination of English, French, German, and hand-waving. "Ja. Vielen Dank."

He had planned to go to Bratislava for months, at least in theory, but a field trip to Hungary for his Geologic Mapping seminar had given him both opportunity and cover story. After a successful three days of work, unseasonably heavy rain had washed out their site and they'd been given the fourth day to themselves. Alex had ridden back to Györ with the group, going with them as far as the train station. He had told the trio going to Vienna that he was going with the rest of the gang to Budapest, then told the Budapest-bound group that he'd changed his mind and was going to Vienna after all. They'd given him grief typical Alex with his head elsewhere and he'd taken it with the good humor that they'd intended. And then he'd booked round-trip passage to Bratislava's Hlavná stanica. The trip, including border crossing, was ninety minutes and he had had time to pull out his notes and work.

"Es kostet fünf euros für die Dokumente." The clerk gave him the papers in a plain brown envelope.

Alex handed over the correct change; he was now the proud owner of reproductions of the incorporation papers of one Magdanya Imports. He smiled, put the rest of the money back into his pocket, put the identification card that said he was Irish citizen Darragh Moran into his breast pocket, took out his sunglasses, and left the office, following the Byzantine hallways with their identical beige painted walls and flickering fluorescent lights. While much of Bratislava's government complex was old and beautiful much more than he'd thought would be the case there were exceptions and those exceptions were notable. The building had the boxy, sturdy look of something the communists had put up when they were running out of money and power and the Slovaks had not bothered to replace because it kept the rain out and they had more important things to do.

The heavy steel doors at the entrance were wedged open to allow fresh air in or at least what would be fresh air if there weren't a dozen Slovak civil servants standing right outside and smoking like chimneys. Alex moved past them, crossed the street and headed back toward the open-air market he had passed after he'd gotten off the shuttle bus. It was early afternoon and he hadn't eaten since the pastry and coffee at barely after dawn. There were pubs and cafés all along the street leading to the market and he stopped in one of the former, getting a pint of local brew and a plate groaning with sausages, cabbage, and potato dumplings for less than a bottle of milk cost back in Oxford. He ate heartily and hungrily and, sated, he pushed the plate aside and pulled out the folder into which he'd tucked the envelope. It was a thick folder, crammed with printouts, photographs, and notes taken during his months of research.

It had taken Alex the better part of six weeks to completely parse the files on the CD Piotr had left him almost a year ago, to compile a list of names, places, companies, dates, and other data. It had taken him nearly six months to make anything in the way of headway toward understanding what he'd been given.

The short answer seemed to be "everything", but the more precise answer was that Alex was in possession of a lot of specifics, most of which were out-dated and very little of which could be considered either revelatory or damning. Most of the information could be constructed into the form of a narrative, the story of how expatriate academic Charles Xavier had met and, at least intellectually, been seduced by wealthy eccentric Erik Lehnsherr, who was now dead. It didn't matter, in the grand scheme of things, that Erik Lehnsherr had been Magneto. Mutant terrorist or oil baron, Lehnsherr was dead and that left very little in the way of usefulness on the CD.

Long before the Savage Lands had become a reality, Erik Lehnsherr had created a vast and largely untraceable network of holding companies, bank accounts, and other means of asset management ideally suited for illicit activities. On the CD there had been an early draft of a speech by Xavier, never given as far as Alex could tell, advocating the establishment of support cells in each city and country, ready to protect, defend, and if need be spirit away mutants from danger. But if the files on the disc were the groundwork for a mutant Amnesty International; they were also the elements of a far darker purpose. Among the items on Piotr's CD, there were PDF files of legal documents, bank passbooks, and birth certificates, images of signatures that could be forged, and a file of what Alex assumed were account numbers, names, and (in cipher) the names and locations of the banks. There were deeds to warehouses, commercial buildings, homes, and at least one plane.

But what troubled Alex was not that the network existed it would have surprised him more if it hadn't; even homicidal maniacs needed to pay for goods and services it was instead that what was on the CD Piotr had given him had all of the markings of being collected by a relatively low-level member of the Brotherhood hierarchy and not someone in a true position of knowledge. Alex had spent six months chasing down names and had come to no stopping point; Zeno's paradox had nothing on this elaborate setup that seemed to fold over on itself while simultaneously spreading to almost every country with a bank that insured deposits and a few that didn't, but would forget your name for a few extra euros.

Alex suspected the trail that had led him to Bratislava had been laid long before there was a European Union and long before there was an independent Slovakia. When he'd asked the clerk where the deed for the home of Magdanya Imports was located, she had told him it was in an old and expensive part of town, one that had been the commercial area for the communist bigwigs while everyone else went without. Erik Lehnsherr, son of Holocaust survivors, had divested from Austria after Kurt Waldheim came to power, but Bratislava was right over the border and he certainly had had the cash to grease the right palms before 1989.

The waitress, a slightly plump bottle blonde with too much eye shadow and the wrong shade of lipstick gestured toward the empty beer mug. "Wurde Sie mögen andere?"

Most of the Slovaks here, at least those in service positions, spoke German at least passably and he'd heard it more than once on the street. The Austrians must love it here, Alex mused. With the differing economies, it must be like the New Yorkers who went to Jersey on the weekends to shop to get away from the taxes and the higher prices.

"Kein danke," he replied, shaking his head. It was good beer and a pleasant place to sit, but he had no idea where else his wild goose chase would take him and he had to be back in Hungary tonight.

She handed him the check and he pulled out his pocketful of change and the map of Bratislava he had bought in the train station. He asked her to show him where on the map the street Magdanya Imports was located on would be and she pointed to a spot that was a couple of kilometers away. It was on the other side of what looked to be an old part of the city, judging by the number of little pinkish rectangles that indicated noteworthy or historical sites.

It took an hour's walk to get there, mostly because the map could not predict Bratislava's public works department blocking off alleyways and pulling up cobblestones in some ambitious project that involved laying new sewer pipes. Back in New York, the Transit Museum had been not far from where he'd lived with his foster family and he remembered the photographs of when that city's subway was being built; a century later, the same haphazard feats of civil engineering were once again being employed to prop up façades as the streets were being gutted. The buildings were old, centuries old in some cases, and if one ignored the changes in fashion and the foremen screaming into cell phones, it could almost have been the same scene.

At one point, feeling hopelessly lost, Alex gave up the pretense of knowing where he was going and asked for direction. An elderly man walking with a stoop and leaning heavily on a cane waved dismissively at the map Alex offered him and, instead, gestured toward a tallish tower a what looked to be a few blocks away.

The tower was not very tall from up close or at least not to Alex's jaundiced view after having grown up in a city of skyscrapers. It had a base of maybe six stories, then it narrowed into a hexagon that went up for one or two more. There were windows in the base, but not enough to tell whether they were for a staircase or for rooms. What was notable about the tower was that it was in the middle of the cobblestone street with an arch cut into its bottom, a smooth vault cutting away most of the first story that was wide enough for a car or even a bus to pass through. Sort of an Enlightenment version of the apartment buildings over the entrance to the GW Bridge back home in New York. There was no rush hour traffic backed up here, though. While he supposed that emergency vehicles could get through, it was a strictly pedestrian path that just happened to be wide enough for two-way auto traffic.

Once through the arch and out from under the tower, Alex looked around. It felt like he was in a canyon of buildings, unbroken stretches of four stories of apartments over street-level storefronts, each old and with beautiful moldings around each window. To his right, the buildings were painted a hideous canary yellow and to his left, the more typical whitewash darkened by aging a country that had taken part in the Industrial Revolution but hadn't quite gotten into the pollution phobia that gripped Western Europe and America.

The sign for Magdayna Imports was large and easily seen, light-colored copperplate on a brass-framed black backround. It was between a pub and a tailor and the door was open.

"Hallo?" Alex called quietly as he stepped inside. He took off his sunglasses and smoothed his oxford. He'd dyed his hair brown the day before they'd left Oxford, ostensibly to woo a girl on the trip (his mates had found it amusing) and he'd taken out his nose ring on the train while his tattoos were not visible with him wearing a long-sleeve shirt. He was betting on the changes in appearance, plus the likelihood that most Slovaks couldn't tell a weak Irish accent from a good one, being enough to keep it from being immediately obvious that it was Alex Summers (or Alex Blandings, depending on who was asking) poking around.

A woman in her sixties scurried out from the back room. She was stocky, like many Slovaks of middle age were, and had striking Slavic eyes that had probably been her best feature even before her face had filled out from years and carbohydrates. She smiled warmly at him.

"Wie kann ich Ihnen helfen?"

Alex grinned. Nobody yet today had spoken to him first in Slovakian. "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" he asked hopefully. His German really wasn't good enough to be doing all of this without recourse to another language. He understood more than he could say and most of what he could say came via circumlocution; he'd taken a few semesters' worth at Balliol and while his tutor was a far more demanding instructor than he'd have managed at an American university, his French was still better.

"A little bit," she answered apologetically, shrugging artlessly.

"I'm looking for this man," Alex began, pulling his backpack around on his shoulder and pulling out a picture of Erik Lehnsherr. It was an old photo, perhaps as much as fifteen years old, and Lehnsherr was shown relaxed and happy, sitting in a Queen Anne chair with books behind him. "I was told that he owned this store."

The woman took the photo hesitantly and Alex watched her face closely. Her brow furrowed slightly as she looked at the photo. "My husband owned this store. He is... tot. I own it now," she said as she held the photo out to him.

"I just..." Alex trailed off, hoping he looked crestfallen. He ran his fingers through his hair as if in distress. "This man, he is my grandfather mein Großvater. I've never met him. I don't think he knows I exist. My mother... sie ist krank. I wanted to tell him... This was my only lead... "

She looked at him sharply, waiting to see what he said.

"Ich hatte gehofft..." he sighed, genuinely flustered at his lack of progress and the expectant look on her face, as if at any moment he'd start making more sense. His German classes had been geared toward reading comprehension, with less emphasis on speaking and listening, and today had been nothing but illustrative in how that was a shortfall.

"This was my only idea of where he could be... Ich weiß nicht wo sonst... " he broke off and looked at her pleadingly.

There was a long pause and he waited, breath held, until the woman withdrew her hand and looked at the photo again, lips pursed sourly. "What is his name?"

"His name is Jacob Steinman," Alex answered, exhaling audibly and with obvious relief. "But I don't think he used it here. He had... viele Namen."

"Alle sie tun das," she muttered. "Rickard Vietsch. He owns this place. This... Gebäude. I have not seen him in many years."

She handed the photograph back, looking at him critically. "You have his nose," she said thoughtfully and Alex wondered if she was deciding whether to help the pathetic Jewish boy or not. He didn't have remotely the same nose as Erik Lehnsherr, but neither of them had very small noses.

"Do you have an address?" he asked instead.

"It is another company, not a person," she warned as she turned back toward the counter. Walking behind, she went to an old ledger tucked into a niche in the wall. The store, all dark wood polished to a gleaming shine, had no cash register. "It is in Bonn."

"That's okay," he replied quickly. Bonn was easy. Bonn had online phone directories and German efficiency when it came to getting information and he'd probably not even have to go there to get the next relay point. Because whatever was in Bonn would not be the answer to his questions, either.

The woman returned with a piece of paper upon which an address was written in large, flowing handwriting. "Good luck," she said as she handed it to him.

"Thank you very much." He put the paper and the photograph back into the folder in his bag. "I appreciate it a lot."

Alex looked at his watch as he exited the shop. He had six hours left before he had to be on a train back to Györ. More than enough time to do some actual sightseeing, although the temptation was strong to find a pub and plan his next step or an internet café and see if he couldn't discover the next leap after Bonn if there was a lead in Vienna, say, that would be possible to work on today rather than waiting for a long weekend or a recess.

On the way back toward the old city, right near the Municipal Museum, there was a protest. Alex had to laugh as it became obvious what it was about; as part of the blatant attempts to woo EU interest, Slovakia had started legislating in favor of mutant rights. The response was quick and remarkably well organized both the Friends of Humanity and the Human Supremacy League had set up outposts in Bratislava, among other Eastern European cities. Alex had still been with FoH when they had put together the 'diplomatic mission'; he'd have gone if it had been during summer vacation and not mid-semester. The protest, largely by students and only some of them obviously mutants, was a demonstration against the FoH storefront. Most of the signs were in Slovakian, a few in German, and some in English.

"Mutants Are Welcome in Slovakia" one of the signs said. And Alex, feeling for his backpack over his shoulder, laughed sardonically. If they only knew.

* * *


	9. Deja Vu

"Relax," Natasha urged as they strode down the hall. "Fury's more upset with himself than he is with you." 

Piotr looked down at his teammate walking next to him. He must have appeared as disbelieving as he felt because Natasha smiled indulgently and patted his arm.

"He underestimated you," she explained, head swiveling to follow an exceptionally handsome officer walking in the other direction before snapping her attention back to look up at him. "You were so... bewildered when you came to us. So lost. Our gentle, naive giant. Fury thought he could read you like a book and he's embarrassed because he read you badly."

They reached the security checkpoint for the SHIELD executive's inner sanctum and had to wait for the two sergeants on duty to finish their examination of the woman in front of them. The call had come five minutes ago to join Fury and Clint in Fury's office and despite Clint's amused voice on the phone and Natasha's anticipatory glee, Piotr still felt like he was being escorted to his execution.

"Are you?" Piotr asked.

Clint had planned things out the night before, over the last of the tea and cake and after the children had been sent off to play. They'd all go home (or to the SHIELD quarters Piotr used as his base when in New York) and get a good night's sleep and Clint would talk to Fury in the morning. Despite the assurances, Piotr had barely been able to sleep at all, something Natasha anticipated when she had showed up at his quarters shortly after seven bearing breakfast and fresh, strong coffee. He had no idea where she had found scones and clotted cream on the way to the Triskelion from her hotel. He'd been afraid to ask her, even to make simple conversation, because he was afraid he'd hear the coldness of her response. It had been an oddly quiet breakfast, Natasha's cutting rejoinders to Katie Couric's morning perkiness the only talk.

"Am I embarrassed at misreading you?" Natasha laughed, a loud, carefree noise that startled the sergeants on the security detail. "Of course not. SHIELD began as a synthetic organization; we all came from someone else's toybox and were forged by someone else's hands."

The sergeants approached, metal detecting rods in hand. Natasha, dressed in jeans and a flattering sweater, posed outrageously with her arms extended and her hips cocked at a suggestive angle. Piotr watched with practiced patience as she made the sergeants blush all without looking like she was trying. "And besides, I rather think I know all of your most interesting secrets."

He sighed helplessly and Natasha laughed again. That wicked laughter, more than the fresh orange marmalade at breakfast and the current good mood, gave Piotr hope that he hadn't lost his place with her. Natasha did not believe in laughing with her enemies and she did not believe in softening the blow for someone who was getting what they deserved.

The suite outside Fury's office was buzzing with activity and tension. The two civilian secretaries had the slightly dazed look of the shell-shocked as they typed, not even looking up as Piotr and Natasha entered. The two sentries were already standing and had a seriousness about them that Piotr associated with being recently yelled at and Rudelsky's desk was unoccupied, which meant he was already inside, which in turn meant that Fury was already making decisions.

Corporal Nitsu opened the door and Fury's voice could be heard within.

"-- _not_ be a joint operation. I don't care about what Grosvenor wants to throw under Posse Comitatus. This is going to be SHIELD... Well, fine. If he wants to go that route, he can. We'll see who gets tossed off that slag heap."

Fury hung up the phone with an annoyed grunt as they entered. Clint, in one of the seats across from Fury's desk, turned to greet them with a quick grimace roll of his eyes. In the other seat, out of uniform, was Captain America, presumably not there in his capacity as the team leader of the Ultimates. He, too, turned, but only nodded in acknowledgment of their arrival.

Piotr had met Steve Rogers many times since that first morning at the Triskelion and wanted to like him, but while he didn't _dis_like the hero, he also understood why Clint still got nervous around him. Even when Steve Rogers smiled and laughed, there was something unsettling about him. Right now, there was no laughter.

"Sit down." Fury pointed angrily and Piotr followed Natasha to the couch against the window. Fury looked over at his computer screen for a moment, then stood up and ran his palm over his bald scalp.

"Congratulations, Rasputin. You have now proceeded to piss me off on a level it took your teammates years to achieve. _Years._" Fury slapped a tall pile of folders near his left hand. "Do you know how many files we have on Magneto? On Charles Xavier? On telepathy, telekinesis, on the Brotherhood? On the X-Men?"

"A lot?" Piotr asked when it became clear that Fury was not asking a rhetorical question.

"Do you know how much of it has now been rendered hopelessly obsolete with your little 'oh, by the way, Magneto's alive and well and living in _Queens_'?" Fury asked, fist coming down hard on the pile. "Do you know how much of the rest of what's left has to be re-evaluated now that we know that Charles Xavier is a strong enough telepath to fake his old buddy's death in front of more than a thousand witnesses? We have gone from barely being able to tread water to wearing cement shoes like that --" he snapped. "You have vexed me, Rasputin."

"Well, we always knew he'd make a great SHIELD agent," Clint said mildly, ignoring Fury's glare.

"Rudelsky!" Fury barked over Clint and Captain America's head. Piotr turned. Rudelsky was at the small desk at the back of the large office, hunched over the keyboard of the computer there and wearing a headset. "Speak!"

"Temporary stationary surveillance in place; strategic command will be set up within the hour." Rudelsky didn't look up as he spoke, didn't even stop typing. Rudelsky, as far as Piotr knew, had no nerves, no first name, and no fear of the wrath of Nicholas Fury. He did have the ability to hide in plain sight, blending in to the background and being all but forgotten until his boss summoned him. To Piotr's and Clint's minds, he also had the more impressive attribute of unsettling Natasha, who had forgotten he was present several times and then been startled upon being reminded.

"Affinity placement?"

"Working on it, sir," Rudelsky replied calmly. The process of inserting an agent to befriend Erik Lehnsherr would take days at least. "They're still compiling the profile. There's a request to release Mister Rasputin's last psych. eval. so that they can use it."

"Do you have anything to help with that?" Fury asked Piotr. The anger was gone from his voice, replaced with a sourness that wasn't quite sarcasm. "Or do I let them have it?"

"No!" Clint barked with genuine irritation. "They have enough other stuff from him. Leave his psych file alone."

Piotr watched Clint and Fury glare at each other. Clint's belief in the sanctity of privacy was absolute and unaffected by his years in the service and Piotr had rarely been more grateful. He'd had two evaluations so far, one right when he'd first been brought in and one a few days ago during his probationary hearings, and while part of a psych eval was learning how to not say anything of relevance, he didn't want anything he did say going anywhere, least of all to the Psy Ops division.

"Tell them to do their own homework, Rudelsky," Fury finally said. "They can get a transcript of Rasputin's interview with Intelligence. Interview_s_. Plural. There will be many."

Piotr stared at the floor, as much to avoid Fury's glare as to try to recall elements of any of his conversations with Lehnsherr that wouldn't have been picked up by Clint's more expert conversational interrogation. Mentions of home, mentions of work, mentions of... "When Xavier took me to see him, he said that Lehnsherr was seeing a woman in his building."

Fury nodded. "Rudelsky?"

"Already forwarded, sir."

"Right," Fury said, mostly to himself. He sat down and put his elbows on his desk. "Well, gentlemen," he said looking at Captain America and Clint. "We have some unpleasant tasks left to us. What to do with the Brotherhood and the Lehnsherr twins and what to do about Charles Xavier and his X-Men."

"Who says we have to do anything about them?" Clint took off his glasses and cleaned them on the edge of his shirt. "The twins are happy as they are running the Brotherhood and Xavier wants us to think he's just a harmless idealist. Why create three brushfires when one will do? We've just shitcanned three quarters of our intel -- which probably is for the best considering how little it got us. Why not see what we can see now that we have a clue what's going on -- instead of going gangbusters and finding out the hard way what other surprises are lying in wait? A little reconnaissance may keep us out of an ambush."

"Xavier is a 'harmless idealist' with his own private militia," Captain America -- Piotr had been told on numerous occasions to call him 'Steve', but couldn't think of him as such -- pointed out. "And the twins are still terrorists. Terrorists who may be in league with Xavier himself. What's to say that they don't know about their father? Keeping him... lobotomized... means that they are free to act as they would. Why would they want to hand over control of the Brotherhood to someone who had so little success running it?"

"They don't know," Piotr said and everyone turned to look at him.

"They didn't a year ago," Natasha corrected gently. "They may now."

"We'd know if they did," Piotr persisted, leaning forward. "They may not want to cede control of the Brotherhood, but they'd want revenge on the Professor for not telling them. They don't think like him, but..."

"They don't think like Magneto, either," Fury countered. "And as much as they pull the same stupid shit he did, I really don't think they liked Magneto at all."

"They didn't like Magneto," Piotr agreed. "But they loved their father. He wasn't always Magneto to them. That the Professor... that Xavier turned Magneto into someone who doesn't even know he's a mutant? It's a double betrayal."

"Are you so sure it would be so personal?" Captain America asked, curiosity plain. "The Brotherhood is a like a multi-billion dollar business. Families have been torn apart for less."

"They still speak Epsilon-Omega to each other," Piotr replied.

"Nobody's doubting their dedication to the mutant cause," Clint said, turning slightly to face Piotr and Natasha.

Piotr ran his fingers through his hair and looked down at the carpet. How could he explain an instinct? All he was basing his own reaction on was a day and night more than a year ago. But he remembered Wanda's burning eyes as she spoke of burying the mutants killed by the Sentinels and abandoned by their families and the way both twins spoke of Xavier's treatment of his son.

"It's personal," Piotr insisted. "They see Xavier as... the last link to their life before their father became Magneto. That's why they still go to him for advice even though they don't trust him."

There was quiet for a moment, the only sound being Rudelsky's typing in the back of the room.

"Assuming that they don't know," Fury began, "Do we get anything by telling them? Does their sense of betrayal extend to giving us more information?"

"They'd act on their own rather than come to us," Clint answered sourly. "They'll keep it in the family. Certainly if they think we've been holding out on them for the last two-plus years."

Natasha nodded agreement. "They'd lash out at us and, maybe, if we were lucky, Xavier too. Besides, they aren't the best source of information about Xavier's recent activities. Piotr knows much more about what's going on in Westchester than they do."

It felt odd, Piotr realized idly, not to feel torn apart by this discussion of the X-Men. It felt awkward, to be sure, but he thought he ought to regret more strongly that he was in a position to compromise the freedom and happiness of his former teammates and would-be mentor. He no longer thought Charles Xavier either benevolent or benign, but he wondered why he could so easily see Xavier as target and potential enemy instead of as the man who had saved him from an uncertain future. Xavier had rescued him to use him, but so had Fury. Except Fury was open about the fact while Xavier hid his plans behind benevolent innocence. Did honesty really make that much of a difference? And what of his teammates? How much did any of them really know? If SHIELD brought them in, would they be offered the same choice he was? Would they take it?

"I haven't spoken with anyone for more than a year," Piotr pointed out when he realized everyone had turned to him. "The twins have kept in contact with Xavier. Didn't they go to him after Proteus and talk?"

"We have corroborating intel on Proteus from them," Fury confirmed. "Don't give me that look, Rasputin. I forwarded on anything I thought you needed to know."

"Which was practically nothing," Piotr retorted before he could stop himself.

"You were being deprogrammed and were as jumpy as a frog as it was," Fury said mildly. "You're welcome to the file now."

Piotr shook his head in familiar irritation. It was an old argument. Now, a year later, the details were relatively unimportant in light of developments, just as they would have been too important when they were current.

"Our bottom line remains that if we have to strike against Xavier and the X-Men, Piotr's our best outside source of intel." Clint shifted in his seat again to face forward. "Telling the twins is as good as telling Xavier that we're on to him and we're not prepared to handle those consequences just yet. Not until we re-evaluate just what sort of ticking timebomb he is."

Piotr couldn't see Clint's face, but he could imagine the look the man was giving Fury. Clint did not hide the fact that he thought the X-Men should have been permanently disassembled after encountering Weapon X. He thought -- and had told Piotr as much -- that allowing a powerful mutant militia, a militia driven by child warriors, to rebuild and grow stronger, all within US borders, was dangerous and just asking for trouble. From what Piotr had heard from Natasha, Fury, confident in SHIELD's ability to keep the X-Men under their watchful eye and indirect control, had disagreed. Piotr did not think it a stretch to imagine that the private meeting between the two of them earlier had been a revisiting of that old argument.

"It's my understanding that SHIELD tacitly supports the Lehnsherrs' control of the Brotherhood as the least of all possible evils," Captain America said as the glares between Fury and Clint threatened to turn into a full-bore staring match. "You let them run things because you can predict their actions within an acceptable degree of accuracy. Introducing this bit of information brings their actions outside the realm of what you can control, or at least what you can influence."

"So we sit on all of this," Fury sighed, leaning back in his chair. "And hope it doesn't go off under our asses. For how long? Do we wait until Xavier has amassed a force that could take down a government? I don't like being passive here. Being trusting and sympathetic has gotten us into this mess. I don't want to get burned twice."

These were rhetorical questions, but only to a point. Fury looked resigned to a plan he was uncomfortable with, not as if he were still questioning what to do. They'd tried his way after Weapon X and it had not worked out. And now something else would have to be tried instead.

"We prepare an attack plan," Clint said, not sounding at all like he was gloating at this rare admission of fallibility from Fury. "We make sure that we are ready to take down the X-Men without hesitation and without complication should the need arise. And we err on the side of caution when deciding if and when it comes up. We can't sit back and wait for them to try to take over the country, or whatever the hell Xavier's real plan is. But the reason we've left them this long is that we aren't in a position of strength. We take them on right now, we lose. We need to do the legwork we didn't want to do before when we thought Weapon X would dull their appetite for adventure and they'd settle down."

Fury tapped the pen he was holding against the pad on his desk a few times. "We have specs of some of the underground facility and the blueprints for the house itself. Rasputin, I want you to go through them and make any corrections or additions you can. I can't imagine Xavier left our system unaltered. I know you declined to do so the first time we asked you, but that was then and this is now."

Piotr nodded. After rescuing the X-Men from Weapon X, SHIELD had offered to install a security system and Xavier had been too heartbroken from the assault to object, although in fact the Professor had seemed pleased with it once it was in place. Scott and Henry had modified it while Piotr had helped with the heavy lifting. He had been asked many questions about the mansion and its systems during his initial interrogations with SHIELD and, not sure of where his loyalties ultimately laid, he'd said nothing.

The intercom sounded and Fury looked surprised and irritated. "What?"

"I'm sorry, sir," a tinny voice said, "but Captain America has a television interview in an hour and Miss Ross would like to discuss it with him beforehand."

Fury took his finger off the button and snorted. "Betty would like to see you so that she can put words into your mouth," he reported dryly.

Captain America departed with brief goodbyes and little visible enthusiasm for either his meeting with Betty Ross or his interview. The level of intimacy of the interviews and reports disturbed him, Piotr knew. This wasn't the newsreel and photograph from the 1940's; this was the internet and MTV and millions of people having access to his shoe size and pants inseam measurements. But Captain America was an icon and a fascination and Steve Rogers believed in the importance of that enough to be willing to sacrifice for it.

The rest of the meeting was almost purely procedural and Piotr had a hard time focusing because of it. They were sitting there discussing how to take down the X-Men and Charles Xavier, his friends and former teammates, people he had been through so _much_ with -- Sentinels, Weapon X, missions both great and small, everyday life -- and Piotr couldn't adjust to how _normal_ it all was. Fury was barking into his intercom for various assistants and folders, griped testily at nobody in particular about the twenty-first century not producing a paperless office, and asked occasionally random-seeming questions of him, Clint, and Natasha. And Piotr found his attention wandering as it always did during long briefings and then wondered how it could during this, of all meetings.

Finally, after the specialist tasked to the Brotherhood left, Clint stood up and picked up his jacket. Following a cue Piotr had obviously missed, Natasha stood and stretched languorously, kicking him to stand as well before Fury could lodge much of a protest and, four hours after Piotr entered, they left the executive suite to Fury's reminder that they were still on medical leave.

"Well, that went better than expected," Natasha said as she waited for Clint to put on his jacket. Clint raised an eyebrow and gave her a disbelieving look.

"He didn't curse at us in Flemish or throw anything," she explained with a shrug. "You remember what he did after the Nicaraguan fiasco?"

Clint snorted. "He's got shitty aim. As long as he doesn't send us off to some _other_ godforsaken place to 'punish' us, he can throw all the paperweights he likes."

* * *

"Good evening Mister Frost, Miss Frost," the doorman said with a bow of his head as they passed. Emma gave a quick half-smile of acknowledgement, but her father walked by without so much as seeing the man. 

The foyer was the same as ever, spotless and well-lit and tasteful. The eternal and unchanging nature of the Hellfire Club had been a comfort, a confirmation of continuity of power and position. It had been an oasis from the annoyances of daily life, from paparazzi to politicians, a place where her guard could be lowered and she could relax. But that had changed when Xavier and Shaw had exposed the Club's static decadence as a front for a more dynamic secret power, and Emma no longer felt at ease.

That there was an inner circle was neither news nor at all surprising. There was no egality within the Hellfire Club, merely a shared sense of entitlemen. Within the rarified strata of the Club, there was a caste system, unspoken but well understood and never transgressed, a series of concentric circles with each inner circle opaque to all who stood without. There had to be an endpoint, an innermost circle, and all that Emma thought she'd ever know about it was that she'd never know precisely who was in it. She still didn't, of course, but she did now know about Sebastian Shaw's leadership of it and that, if anything, proved the surprise.

Shaw represented real power, as opposed to simply descendence from the oldest established families, and that was both entertaining and dangerous. That at least some of its members not only were mutants but also that they _knew_ about each others' mutations... it implied a very tight sort of bond -- getting outed was still the fastest way to irretrievable disgrace.

The consequent question was obvious: if they knew about each other, did they know about anyone else? And if they did, what would they want to keep that information quiet? There was no doubt that such knowledge was power and Emma _knew_ that she was being watched every time she stepped through the Club's doors. What she didn't know was precisely how exposed she was. Were Shaw and his cronies watching her like eagles watching prey, waiting for the moment when they could swoop down and strike? The options were endless, especially when you lived a life rich with possibility and largely free of consequences. They wouldn't want something pedestrian, not when they could meet all of their own desires without any intrigue.

She shrugged off her sable coat with the help of the coatroom attendant and handed over her hat and muff. New York was guaranteed one week in January with unseasonably and unbearably cold weather and this year it happened to coincide with the Frost Industries annual benefit, which meant that Emma had been only one of dozens of miserably uncomfortable women with exposed calves covered only by the sheerest of stockings and feet tucked into delicate slippers completely incapable of warding off the sub-zero cold. It had taken a half hour and a stiff scotch to feel her toes after arriving at the FI Building and it would take at least that long here after getting stuck chatting with the Ukrainian ambassador's wife outside the limo.

"I'm going to the lounge," her father told her as they made their way back to the foyer. "I'll be leaving here no later than half-past twelve, so if you're going to stay later, have the decency to send a message."

It took more strength to say something polite in response, so Emma said nothing at all. Apparently serving as official hostess for the function -- her mother was in Switzerland taking some sort of mineral cure for her latest 'ailment', her grandmother was snowbirding somewhere in the Canary Islands with her grandfather, and hell would freeze over before Adrienne would be considered for the task -- was not enough to return her to her father's good graces. She'd cancelled her own plans, of course, and had done a fabulous job -- she'd made judicious use of her telepathy to ferret out the shy and the sullen and otherwise monitor the thoughts of a diverse and shockingly wealthy international group. But Winston Frost had long ago raised grudge-bearing to an art and present success was no cure for past disappointments.

Emma didn't bother wasting a thought on wondering what she was being 'punished' for now, let alone poke around to find out for sure. There were moments when she was sorely tempted, but they came few and far between and mostly she just didn't care. They were not close, had not been close since she was a small child, and far more cross words than affectionate ones had been spoken between then over the years. They did not like each other either as people or as family members and found the other's presence irritating. Nonetheless, she didn't hate her father and, if it came to it, she would not let herself be used as the instrument of his destruction. She pitied him for letting the fact that he had no sons keep him from happiness, but not so much that she would transform herself into the son he never had to ease his disappointment. So, as with most other occasions when he spoke to wound, instead of saying anything that they'd both regret for being said in public, she kept walking as her father turned to climb the stairs, knowing that her father knew that her only possible destination was the first-floor bar and knowing that he'd disapprove of that as well.

The first-floor bar, unlike the one upstairs, was mostly the domain of the younger set and Emma smiled in response to waves of recognition from familiar faces. They'd all gone to the same circle of schools -- Chapin, Calhoun, Horace Mann, Choate -- and they'd all known each other since they'd been escorted down Fifth Avenue by their nannies. They were not all friends or even all friendly, but they were of the same caste and with that high birth came a certain loyalty that provided shelter from without. But what about from within? How deep did that loyalty go when the threat was not a faceless stranger, but instead someone they knew? In the past, Emma and especially Adrienne had risked the displeasure of their elders and the disdain of their cohort by associating with celebrities and other nouveau types. But now that taste for 'slumming' proved useful -- it gave Emma an excuse to steer clear of anyone close to Sebastian Shaw or anyone else left standing that night by Xavier. None of her loose cohort were mutants, but most of them were from lesser families and were perfectly happy to stay away from the Hellfire Club and instead make their fun at the trendy spots that still bent over backwards for the social elite, be they Carthwell, Grance, Hollis, or Frost.

Tonight, there was nobody she especially wanted to talk to, certainly not in her present foul mood, and so she went to the bar, gave Victor her order, and found a club chair without anyone else seated nearby, snatching a handful of salted macadamia nuts on the way.

The reason the first-floor bar was eschewed by the older members of the Hellfire Club was simple: the presence of a large plasma television on one wall. It had appeared one year in time for some major sporting event -- the Final Four or the Superbowl or something on that level -- so that the sons of New York's elite could watch together without crowding into one of the over-packed bars on Second Avenue. It had stayed and those who considered it blasphemy to have a television in a club had left and not returned.

Right now, the television was showing CNN, the blonde talking head looking seriously into the camera as she spoke. The volume was off, although there were wireless speakers in pouches next to each chair in case anyone wanted to watch. Emma took a perverse pleasure in watching television news with no sound; with no way for her telepathy to pick up on the stray thoughts of the newsreader, there was a genuine lack of information and that ignorance, all but impossible since her mutation manifested, provoked an almost giddy feeling.

"She's telling us that the X-Men saved a girl from getting strung up in Berkeley today," a voice said from behind her, a large snifter of cognac appearing right in front of her. Emma took the glass, then followed the hand that offered it up to find herself looking into the face of Shinobi Shaw. A decade of masking her telepathic eavesdropping assured her that no surprise showed.

"May I?" he asked, gesturing with a tilt of his head toward the empty chair next to her.

"Please," she replied, wondering suspiciously at the development. Shinobi had never exchanged anything other than pleasantries with her, had in fact made it rather clear that he found her and Adrienne's antics distasteful. Not that it mattered; Shinobi may be his father's right-hand man and a power dealer in his own right because of it, but he was not considered marriage material by any of the established families. Sebastian Shaw, a self-made billionaire, was still dismissed as nouveau riche by most of the older families despite decades as one of New York's elites. And while illegitimacy in and of itself certainly wasn't a disqualifying feature, there was a natural child and then there was a bastard child and rumor had it that Shinobi's mother had been a maid at a Tokyo hotel. Shinobi's infant half-brother, born of his father's extremely propitious marriage, had far better prospects. Or maybe he didn't, if he'd inherited the same mutated genes Shinobi had.

Shinobi crossed in front of her. He was dressed in black full dress tails, although his white tie was tucked into the pocket and the top button of his shirt was undone. His hair was tied neatly back save for a wisp that fell into his face. He looked rakishly elegant, like the cover model on a romance novel, Emma thought. But Shinobi had no reason to be here with her. While he seemed to like them dull and pretty, she wasn't the heaving bosom type and, as incestuous as their extended cohort could get, they'd never even come close to hooking up.

Victor appeared a moment later, carrying a tray with two tall, narrow glasses filled with what looked to be the same clear substance, but when he put them down, Emma could tell that they were not.

"Berkeley is the home of every left wing and radical cause known," Shinobi said thoughtfully after Victor had left them. Shinobi had been watching the television as he spoke, but he turned sharply to look at her and Emma fought the urge to pull back from the intensity of that gaze. "And yet they can still turn out a lynch mob to murder a sixteen-year-old girl in broad daylight. Apparently being a mutant is the wrong kind of _queer_."

Emma sipped at her cognac to give herself time to formulate an answer and decide how dumb to play this. Up until a year ago, it never would have crossed her mind that Shinobi would be interested in mutants -- the Shaw holdings didn't include anything involved in the extermination of mutants the way, say, Harry Leland's did. The Shaws hadn't fled New York once the Sentinels were active and while they had dutifully shown up at the few benefits held to raise funds to relocate mutants, so had everyone else including Leland.

A year ago, Shinobi had been the epitome of aloof, efficient in his father's employ and enigmatic in his personal life. He was efficient still, if _The Financial Times_ was to be believed, but his aloofness was no longer mysterious. At least not to Emma, who had known since that fateful dinner that Shinobi Shaw, like his father, was a mutant. The question was what Shinobi knew about her. And his presence in the seat next to her after years of all but ignoring her seemed to serve as an answer. Especially with the X-Men on television doing something earnest and destructive.

But was he here on his own behalf or at his father's suggestion? The Shaws, père et fils, were opaque in their personal and professional transactions and if Shinobi were anything less than a dutiful son or perfect executor of his father's business acumen, then nobody who mattered knew about it. If Sebastian were running a cabal within the Hellfire Club, it stood to reason that Shinobi was his faithful retainer there as well. Sebastian could have charged him with this task and Shinobi would have been biding his time -- Emma hadn't been at the Club more than a half-dozen times in the past year without it being a formal event. Not after that particular formal event.

"Would it be the first time inclusive ideals have proven less so in practice?" she finally responded, putting down the snifter. "Surely hypocrisy can't shock you at this late date."

She had heard the entire conversation between Xavier and Sebastian Shaw, presumably because Xavier wanted it to be heard. Having never tried it herself, she didn't know a lot about how telepathic conversation and broadcasting worked, but there was no other explanation for why she should have been able to hear both sides without even knowing at first who was speaking. She had felt the mental compulsion to stand when Xavier had outed all of the Hellfire Club's mutants and hadn't even thought to resist it. She'd seen the X-Men leave, then watched everyone else in the room act as if nothing had happened. Realizing that nobody else _remembered_ the incident, it had made the conclusion of the dinner absurd and surreal.

"Depends on the sort of hypocrisy, I suppose," Shinobi said, leaning back in his seat, tucking the loose strands of hair behind his ear. He was an exceptionally handsome man, far more so than any son of Sebastian Shaw could be expected to be, but always carried himself with the sort of casualness that went with knowing his own beauty and truly not caring. "If you're going to bleat like a wounded animal, you should at least have the decency to practice what you insist on preaching to everyone else."

Once she'd gotten home, she'd pored over all of her secret cache of resources on telepathy and psionic mutation, but hadn't been able to figure out why she had been able to escape Xavier's mental 'encouragement' to forget. And she didn't know if anyone else had -- was Shinobi a telepath? Or were his suspicions based on other, older evidence? Had Xavier only erased the memories of the non-mutants?

"Personally, I prefer it when people keep quiet and not preach at all." She gave him a pointed look, then turned her attention to smoothing the folds of fabric in her lap.

"Actions speak louder than words and are a good deal easier on the ears," Shinobi agreed, sounding amused instead of chastened. "Take the X-Men."

"You can keep them, thanks," Emma retorted, hoping she looked more annoyed than panicked. She forced her hands to rest on her lap and not curl into nervous balls. It was one thing to suspect that she was a target, quite another to feel the trap being constructed around her.

Shinobi laughed quietly. "Not a fan?"

"What's to root for?" Emma asked archly. Even before she'd heard the confrontation between Xavier and Shaw, she'd lost respect for Xavier when it had become clear that he'd started to believe his own hype. His craftiness had been replaced by a crass populism with dreadful books and endless television appearances, turning his toy soldiers into mass-marketed mutant celebrities on par with reality television stars and with just as much relevance. It was no surprise, really, that Shaw had played him as badly as he apparently had. But it would do no good to tell Shinobi that she was disappointed in the man who had once upon a time provided the only hope she'd had that she wasn't crazy.

"The X-Men are ridiculously powerful and completely uncontrolled," she said when Shinobi's gaze turned expectant. She turned to look at the television and could see footage of Storm summoning lightning from the sky and Cyclops blasting something to bits. "Even the cutest puppies need to be housebroken eventually. Who's going to take on _that_ challenge?"

"You'd be surprised."

The words were spoken with such quiet confidence that Emma turned to him sharply. Shinobi's eyes shone with determination and hunger and Emma found it disconcerting enough to drop her eyes down to her glass. This was not the cold satisfaction of a man who knows a joke is being played. It had the conviction of a believer. Either Shinobi didn't know about his father's dealings -- and she found that thought laughable -- or there was far more going on than Sebastian had told Xavier. Did the mutants in the Hellfire Club have their own plans for the X-Men? And did the Shaws envision her a role in this game?

"Why the sudden interest in the X-Men, Young Master Shaw? Are you thinking of joining up? Dressing up in leather and spandex and throwing yourself into harm's way for a world that hates and fears you?"

"Do I look the Uncle Tom type to you?" Shinobi's voice was low and strong and _sultry_ and Emma looked up again. Had he just admitted to her that he was a mutant? He winked at her and she stared.

"I don't know what type you look like, Shinobi," she answered after finally shaking free of his gaze. If he was going to get anything out of her, he'd have to work a lot harder than an ambiguous statement that could have been said to trick her into showing her cards. She gave him a demure smile and returned her eyes to the television, where talking heads were discussing whatever the X-Men had done. "You are a man of hidden depths."

"And you are a woman of similar style," he replied in that same low tone. In any other situation, she'd have taken him to be flirting and reciprocated despite their history, but here and now it felt more menacing than thrilling despite the amused smile he wore. "Playing at flightiness and hiding who you really are."

"My life is an open book," Emma said airily, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she turned back to him. She could see Julia Frank by the doorway, once upon a time her best friend in school, and wondered if she could wave to attract her attention without it being too obvious to Shinobi. She'd never been claustrophobic, but thought that this is what it must be like to feel the walls closing in. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs simply because it kept her from squirming. "Just ask Page Six or _People_. Live in the limelight and you've got no shadows to hide secrets in."

She sipped her cognac, grateful for the warmth it brought to her stomach. Shinobi knew and he wanted something out of the deal. The question was what and for whom. What wasn't a question was whether she'd be given the option of just walking away. She wouldn't.

With some effort and a lot of concentration, she could use her telepathy to read the thoughts of most people, but she'd never tried to manipulate someone else's mind to make them forget or act according to her will. She hadn't wanted to lobotomize her first test subject, so she'd never experimented and it was only now, in her desperation, that she even considered trying with Shinobi. If he was acting on his father's orders, then she'd just be confirming whatever he was out to prove and she'd still have Sebastian and his cabal to deal with.

"You hide yourself in plain sight, Emma," Shinobi went on, leaning forward, his palm flat on the table between them. "You're brilliant and you're _gifted_ and yet you waste your time pretending to be a dumb blonde with no greater aspiration than to sleep with George Clooney."

"George was a long time ago."

Shinobi ignored the levity. "Just because your father doesn't see--"

"My father has nothing to do with this," Emma hissed angrily, not acknowledging the turned heads of those nearby. "You presume too much, Master Shaw."

She sat back, orienting herself in the chair so that she looked forward, toward the television, instead of being angled toward Shinobi as she had been. Her outrage was mostly -- and only mostly -- an act; Winston Frost's displeasure with his daughters was not news to anyone in the room, indeed in the Club. But overreacting would force a change of topic and tactic; if Shinobi was going to accuse her of being a mutant, she really didn't want him doing it in a place where someone could overhear. She was sure she wasn't imagining the covert glances in her direction; in many quarters she and Shinobi would be the most unholy of alliances and there would be a strong undercurrent of gossip throughout their networks even if this conversation ended now without another word passed between them.

Shinobi, still leaning on the arm of his chair toward her, chuckled quietly. "My apologies, Miss Frost. I spoke too familiarly... no pun intended."

Emma turned her head slightly toward him and he bowed his in apology, although not before she could see the laughter and the _confidence_ in his eyes. He had seen through her ploy.

"What is the point of this... conversation?" she asked, not looking at him. If she couldn't unsettle him with histrionics, then perhaps she could by being direct. From across the room, Julia gave her a wave, the quick sort that you gave someone who was busy and you didn't want to interrupt. Far be it for anyone in the room to break up _this_ tete-a-tete. "We have no history, no common friends, no common interests. You have made it perfectly clear that you think little of me and the way I live my life. And so you can throw me in with everyone else in the room who is pretending quite poorly not to be watching us in wondering why you are sitting here."

"Because you're wrong," Shinobi answered calmly, not looking around. He, of course, didn't care who watched. He knew nobody would be coming to her rescue. "Because we have plenty in common and, whatever I think about how you've conducted yourself in the past, I do think most highly of what you could do in the future."

Emma, confused and surprised, finally turned back to face him. Shinobi was smiling knowingly at her. It was a smile both dazzling and subdued all at once and she nearly laughed at how fake his polite mask was now that she'd seen the genuine man underneath.

"We are special, Emma," he continued, voice quiet and commanding, low enough not to be overheard but strong enough to make it feel like he was keeping his voice down for her benefit and not his. "In ways that have nothing to do with our privileged surnames and the heft of our trust funds. We could have the world by rights and, instead, we waste our time alternately trying to prove our fathers right and wrong for wanting us to be other than we are. We are _gifted_ and it is time we put those gifts to use."

"What do you want of me?" The moment of truth and Emma was pleased her voice came out evenly. There was laughter coming from the bar and she hated its frivolity while she felt like she was lined up before the firing squad.

Shinobi's smile broadened and the hand that had rested on the table between them lifted up and extended toward her, as if he were offering to help her rise. "I want you to help me rule the world."

* * *

"The Professor's going to be mad at me, isn't he?" 

Scott looked up from his book. Lorna was standing there, fingers nervously playing with the back of the dining room chair in front of her and her face screwed into a mask of concern. Her bright green hair, re-dyed to its original shade after having first been dyed a dull brown, was pulled back into a ponytail or else Scott was sure she'd be twisting it around her finger just to keep her hands busy.

If Jean was twenty-three going on thirty, Lorna was precisely her own age, both in looks and in temperment. And a tomboy at that. She wore worn jeans and t-shirts and very little in the way of makeup or jewelry except for a charm bracelet that tinkled loudly when she moved her wrist. Which was often -- Lorna was a fidgeter, her Californian-relaxed demeanor somehow not at odd with her inability to sit still. Of course, she'd had only recently been given any reason to be relaxed at all.

Before he made her nervous by not answering, Scott dug out the bookmark and closed the book, placing it on the table. "For what?"

Lorna smiled, awkwardly and embarrased. "For making the Danger Room go boom this morning?"

Scott snorted.

"The Professor's not mad," he assured her. Lorna had been with the team three weeks since her high-profile rescue from a an angry mob in Berkeley and last week had been her debut in the Danger Room. This morning had been her first full-level training session and it had been... explosive. The metal sheeting on the back wall was now lying on the floor, curled into what looked like bacon strips and two of the lasers and four of the mechanical arms had been obliterated. "He's not even vaguely annoyed. He's probably relieved. After Ororo's first session, we had no power downstairs for three days because she blew the wiring in the entire sub-level."

"Yeah?" Lorna sounded more hopeful than skeptical and Scott smiled to himself. He had almost forgotten what it was like to have a newcomer in the house. Lorna was a typical well-adjusted teenager, two parents and little brother included, and, as such, still respected authority and feared getting into trouble with her teachers. In that sense, she was very much like Bobby had been, but while Bobby's entire home life had come before his mutation had manifested, Lorna's family had been actively engaged in hiding her secret. Her mother had dyed her hair as soon as it had started to come in green, her father had driven to other towns to get repaired the appliances she had destroyed with her mutation, and her little brother had been brought up to not speak about his family. Despite her family's best intentions, all of that placed a burden on Lorna and she took it seriously. She had chosen to stay at the school to protect her family and her fear of failure, especially after she'd been outed at home, was almost tangible.

"My first session? I took out the glass in the observation booth," Scott went on, careful to smile and sound as soothing as possible without appearing patronizing. The smile was easy -- enough time had passed that the incident was now funny, instead of the horror it had been at the time. "If Jean hadn't been there, the Professor would have gotten a lap full of lead-lined bulletproof glass."

"Yeah, but..."

"But nothing," Scott cut her off. "That session was intended to see what you could do and the Professor was _expecting_ damage -- he wanted to see how far you could push your powers. So stop worrying. That's an order if you'd like it to be."

Lorna laughed. "I'm not an X-Person yet."

"Seriously, don't worry," Scott said, waving away her words. "It was in the Danger Room, which is built to withstand damage for a reason. It hasn't been modified to accommodate your powers yet, but it will be when it's fixed. And then you'll be expected to do everything you did this afternoon and more --on a regular basis."

Lorna sat down in the chair she'd been holding on to. "I'm hoping that won't be for a few days. I don't think I could levitate a spoon right now. I'm _beat_."

Scott laughed and reached for his glass of iced tea. "Too bad. I think someone came home with a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry's."

"I could always get up and get a spoon the old-fashioned way," Lorna retorted with a grin, not looking up from where she was fiddling with the placemat.

"Where's the fun in that?"

"If it's a choice between Cherry Garcia or no Cherry Garcia?" Lorna finally looked up and smiled as she shrugged.

Scott didn't ask how she knew that Cherry Garcia was one of the choices. Bobby had been the one to get the ice cream and he'd do anything short of raiding the factory to get Lorna the flavor she'd asked for. Bobby was quite smitten and Lorna, from what little Scott had seen, had no real objections to be the focus of his affections.

"Ah, there is our Fearless Leader," Henry cried out from the doorway. "And lo, there is also my unwitting benefactress." He came into the dining room and bowed gallantly at Lorna, who looked unsure of whether or not to be embarrassed.

"Got out of a training session, did you?" Scott asked mildly.

"Indeed I did," Henry confirmed. "Which means that I shall be able to partake in this evening's scheduled festivities. What's on the schedule tonight? _Mars Attacks!_? _Ishtar_? _Hudson Hawk_?"

"_Striptease_," Lorna answered, realizing that Henry was not mocking her. Thursday night was Bad Movie Night and it was Lorna's first turn to choose.

"A fine choice," Henry declared. "Demi Moore, Burt Reynolds, _and_ Armand Assante. Can't go wrong there."

"Hey, I liked _Mambo Kings_," Scott protested.

Henry made a face of disdain. "I believe your rationale for liking that one was the soundtrack and the fact that Antonio Banderas dies bloodily."

"It was a good movie even without that," Scott insisted. "Even if I derived pleasure from a certain character's untimely end."

"You cackled," Henry reminded him pointedly. "Everyone else was wiping tears and you _cackled_. Gleefully, I must add."

"That's only because I had seen it already by the time we watched it. I was properly somber the first time."

Lorna was watching the two of them with amusement when all of a sudden, she stiffened and put her hands to her ears. Her eyes closed, she furrowed her eyebrows for a long moment and then her features relaxed.

"Summoned?" Scott asked, knowing the answer. Watching people learn how to communicate telepathically was usually entertaining. Lorna had apparently taken the instructions in shielding and speaking well, although she was better with the latter than the former. Which was usually the case; Jean was looking forward to the point where she could relax her mental shields within the mansion again.

Lorna nodded, then bit her lip nervously. "I'm going to get a Talking To, aren't I?"

"He's not angry with you, Lorna," Scott insisted. "He probably just wants to reassure you of that. Knowing him, he'll tell you everyone's most embarrassing powers-related moment, from Piotr's putting a cannonball through a wall to my brother blowing up half the third floor when he manifested. We go through a fair share of walls, windows, and doors here."

"I had rather forgotten about Alex's... debut," Henry murmured.

"Because he's caused so many more spectacular explosions since then." Scott had not missed the flash of sadness in Henry's face when he'd mentioned Piotr. Lorna looked warily confused and Scott smiled at her. "My little brother's got a... habit of setting things off. Usually me."

Lorna nodded, then paused before speaking. "Bobby said that your brother was... argumentative... at times."

"That's like saying the sea is a little bit salty," Henry scoffed. Scott wondered if Bobby had told her the truth or edited the story for content; he didn't know Lorna well enough to know how she'd react to Alex's Friends of Humanity past considering her recent adventures and he was trying to convince his brother to visit during the summer.

"Alex is a contrarian of the highest pedigree," Henry went on. "But you will meet him at some point in the future and will find out for yourself that his bark is infinitely worse than his bite. Unless you are his brother and come between him and the last slice of pizza."

"I'm immune to his mutation, so he has to fight me through more conventional means." Scott grinned, then tilted his head toward the doorway. "You'd better go before the Professor calls for you again."

Lorna nodded and gave them a little wave before disappearing. Henry sat down in the chair she had been occupying.

"She does seem to be settling in a bit," he mused once they had heard the faint hiss of the pneumatic door to the sub-basement closing. "It's taken longer than I'd have expected."

Scott shrugged. "She was a wreck when she got here. Chased around town by a crowd with baseball bats and lord knows what else, the cops pulling their _Gauntlet_ routine... And the way we unloaded on them to get her out? She probably thought she'd jumped from the frying pan into the fire. That she wasn't gibbering is probably a minor miracle."

The team had performed maybe a half-dozen extractions in the time they'd been together (Scott counted Bobby as the first, although Bobby would undoubtedly argue the point) and, except for the failed rescue of Rusty from the prison in Colorado, Lorna's had been the most combative of them all. Three weeks later, the BPD still insisted that they had only wanted to take Lorna into protective custody. But when the X-Men had arrived Lorna had been hiding, terrified and nearly hysterical, in an abandoned house surrounded by police with guns drawn and, behind the police cordon, an angry mob of hundreds barely kept back by authorities who did not at all disagree with their wishes.

The extraction had been without fatalities, but that was probably the only positive; Ororo's lightning bolt electrifying two dozen pistols in the hands of legally appointed officers of the law had been captured on video and run endlessly on CNN. All of the good press they'd gotten by raising that Russian submarine the week after Valentine's Day had been completely undone by the damage they'd caused to three houses in a fancy Berkeley neighborhood while trying to save a teenaged girl's life. They just couldn't win.

"She really did a job on the Danger Room," Henry said, shaking his head in disbelief. "The Professor says she could be almost as powerful as Magneto."

"It's probably best that she doesn't hear _that_ for a little while." Her mutation's being similar to that of the dead Magneto's was what had nearly gotten her killed -- Lorna's attempted lynching had come on the anniversary of Magneto's attack on California. Her first pursuers had been marchers coming home from a parade to remember his victims.

Henry nodded. "He had me ordering things all afternoon. Industrial-grade plastic panels for the Danger Room, all sorts of metal boxes and balls and whatnot. Some of what Piotr used to use can get taken out of storage and dusted off, but it's not as much as we'd thought. Although we did find the cast iron hula hoop."

Scott coughed out a laugh and Henry lost his fight to suppress his own grin. They could both remember Piotr's expression when he had been presented with it; it had been part of the Professor's plans to improve Piotr's flexibility and mobility, but Piotr had looked at it with such unrestrained disgust and it had never actually gotten used.

"I miss him," Henry said simply. Scott could only nod agreement. Anything else had long since been said.

It was only a half hour to uniprand (the Professor had long insisted that they use the Omega-Epsilon words for what Scott had always known as "lupper" and "dinner" as the need for both together was a purely mutant concept), so after Henry went off to go find Ororo, Scott went up to his room to put away his book and check his email. Alex had sent him a handful of article links, none of which he wanted to look at now, and 'Ro had sent him a list of "suggestions" for what Jean wanted for their upcoming anniversary. He already knew about the dinner at the Thai place and was not going to do anything involving stripping roses of their petals and making a mess of his bed with them. If she wanted them in her bed, that was fine, but she wouldn't. It wasn't his fault her bedroom was right above Bobby's.

Uniprand was in the dining room, complete with proper dishes, proper meals adapted to their mutant physiologies -- Lorna still took the concept with a grain of salt, not yet training rigorously enough that at least four meals a day was a necessity and not an oddity -- and proper table manners. Normally the Professor's only chance to see all of his pupils at once during the course of a day, uniprand was mandatory for all students on the grounds.

As a result, they were all on their best behavior and Scott, who read a lot of Age of Sail fiction, thought it comparable to those situations when the captain was his officers' guest for dinner -- they'd all seen each other at their worst, but they pretended that they hadn't while in front of their superior. There was some gentle teasing of Lorna for her Danger Room activities, especially after it was clear that she understood that nobody was upset with her, and the Professor used it as a launching point on to a discussion about new training regimes for all of them. Scott had privately spoken to him about the need for more team-oriented sessions; Berkeley could have been made marginally less chaotic if they practiced more together and Xavier was finally starting to agree with him.

The usual routine was to order pizzas around nine for the movie, then start the flick once they'd been delivered. The Professor had raised an eyebrow when he'd heard what they were watching and asked if it was appropriate for an audience with two members still under eighteen, but his skepticism hadn't been enough to put a damper on the giddy mood that surrounded Bad Movie Night.

The pizza had been consumed and a lengthy discussion on the relative merits of Demi Moore's physiology had already grown into a boys-versus-girls debate of far greater range (the distaff side usually far underrepresented in such discussions) when the movie suddenly stopped.

"Did we blow a fuse or did the DVD player finally rebel?" Ororo asked, not bothering to pick her head up from where it lay on Henry's lap.

The lights were already off and the clock on the wall was battery-powered. Scott looked around for anything else in the room that drew electricity. The computer and stereo were already powered off. There was no moonlight and the room was almost pitch-black. He closed his eyes for a few seconds to try to speed their adjustment to the lack of light. He normally had excellent night vision, but not after watching the movie in a darkened room.

"Bobby, go look in the hallway," he said, opening his eyes again. Bobby, who had been using the darkness to sit as close to Lorna as he dared, got up with a grumbled protest.

_Jean, scan for anyone who shouldn't be here,_ he said along their link. He didn't want to start a panic if there was no cause. This was an old house and there had been enough power outtages over the summer that the cause could be benign. But it was his job to be prepared in case it wasn't. He 'felt' her reach out.

_Nobody who shouldn't be here,_ she replied.

"Lights are out all over," Bobby reported from the doorway after gingerly making his way in the darkness. "Blown fuse or are we under attack again?"

"Bobby!" Ororo sighed with annoyance. "This house is over a hundred years old and Con Ed has been digging holes and screwing around all week."

"Go to the window and see if the lights are out all over or if it's just the house, please?" Scott asked before Ororo could say anything about it being an attack or not. He gently moved out from under where Jean had been leaning against him. _Find the Professor,_ he told her along their bond.

"Hey, Fearless Leader," Bobby groused as he left the door, opening it up all the way. "You're just going to put me in harm's way?"

"You're not in any harm," Scott said, wariness sounding enough like irritation. "Go look out the window and see if you can find the street lamps."

He stood up and rolled his neck, trying to look casual as he looked around. He didn't have to be linked to a telepath to realize how terrified Lorna was, sitting alone on a giant floor-pillow with her arms around her drawn-up legs. It was best to keep everyone calm now. He'd rather apologize for being wrong later than get everyone worked up over a blown fuse.

_He's fine and he doesn't sense anyone outside, either,_ Jean reported back. _The Professor's calling Con Ed. Should I go get candles?_

_No._ Scott frowned, glad nobody could see it in the darkness. _I want us all together._

_Scott, Lorna is practically radiating fear._ Xavier's dulcet tones in his mind.

_I know that,_ Scott replied with real annoyance. _And Henry's right behind her. But I want us in one place until I know we're safe._

_I've scanned for intruders,_ Jean insisted, not bothering to hide her indignation. _Neither I nor the Professor sense anyone._

_You didn't sense anyone when Weapon X came for us, either,_ Scott retorted, knowing that it would sound harsher than he'd meant it. _I'm sorry. But we don't know anything yet._

Jean turned away and went to sit next to Lorna. "And you thought rolling blackouts were only in California," she said in a cheerful voice.

Scott, who could still feel her lingering irritation, turned back toward the window. "Well?"

"It looks like Con Ed dug too deep," Bobby answered from the window. If anyone had noticed the long silence that accompanied the telepathic conversation, they said nothing. "Streetlights are out and the Wallachs' lights are out, too. I can't see the Simonovitzs's from here."

_I've spoken to ConEd,_ the Professor's voice spoke in all of their minds. His voice was calm and soothing and Scott tamped down the thought that Xavier was ameliorating the words with telepathic suggestions. _They know about the outage and are sending an emergency maintenance crew out now. They estimate that it will be ninety minutes until power is restored._

"So... shall we crank up the fireplace and make s'mores?" Jean asked.

"Weenie roast!" Bobby cried out.

"Before we start planning snacks, why don't we work on flashlights and candles?" Scott asked rhetorically. "There's a flashlight in the kitchen and there are candlesticks in the dining room."

"I have tea lights and votives up in my room," Ororo offered. "Should I go get them?"

Scott shook his head, realizing belatedly that Ororo was probably too far to see him. "Let's see what we can get out of the dining room first and then, if we need more, you can take the flashlight and go for your supply. It's a blackout, not a seance."

"What about the Professor?" Lorna asked in a small voice.

_I'm fine,_ Xavier answered. _Thank you for your concern, but it is unwarranted. I'm perfectly safe where I am, although I fear my last few paragraphs were not saved before the power went out. Once you are all settled, then perhaps Scott or Jean can come upstairs and tend to me. A pen and paper by candlelight will perhaps untrack my thoughts regarding my current article._

"Okay, then." Scott clapped his hands once. "Everyone up and on to the kitchen."

Jean came close enough to be seen, her arm looped around Lorna's elbow. "Come on, Lorna. I've been around here long enough that I can find my way in the dark easily."

"Hey!" Bobby cried out, crossing the room from the window. "I know my way around, too... OW!" He stopped short as he collided with the narrow table behind one of the couches.

"Serves you right," Ororo admonished after everyone had stopped laughing.

Bobby's accident had cut the tension notably and Scott was thankful for that. Even more thankful for Ororo's subtle attentiveness to Henry, who hadn't said a word since the lights had gone out. Henry had reacted badly the first time the power had failed during the summer and, while he'd gotten better with each successive brown-out and complete black-out, Ororo was making sure to keep up a brave face and stay in close contact with him.

"Everyone mind the end table," Jean warned as she moved to the door with Lorna.

Scott followed close behind, wanting to get a look at the hallway before leading the team to the kitchen. But Bobby's extra-cautious path around the end table had him crossing right in front of where Scott wanted to walk, so he was the last to the doorway.

"Hey!" Ororo exclaimed from the hallway. "Shit! The back door's open! Why didn't the alarm go off?"

The security system ran on an independent power source located in the sub-basement. There was no way anyone should have been able to bypass it from outside without the code or a key.

"I don't see anyone," Jean insisted. Scott knew she meant telepathically and this wasn't the time to point out that he'd been right all along.

"Okay, everyone _freeze_!" he ordered, pushing past Jean and Lorna toward Ororo. "Storm, you're on perimeter guard. I want you outside and in the air finding out who the hell is on their way in. Get out through a window upstairs. Iceman, you do a sweep of the house, starting with the foyer and heading toward the solarium. I will meet you at the pantry. Go!"

He turned to the others as soon as Bobby and Ororo had set off. "Beast, you take Polaris downstairs and get the mainframe up and running again. Hook up the back-up generator if you have to... Marvel Girl, set up a telepathic link with everyone and get to the Professor. I want him brought down to the basement to stay with Beast and Polaris. I'm going to sweep the other half of the first floor."

Lorna looked terrified, but when Henry, who had seemingly conquered his nerves for the moment, reached out his hand for Lorna to take, she did and they went off together. He felt more than saw Jean's reaction as she ran toward the stairs.

Left alone, Scott took off his socks. The floors on this level were highly polished wood or tile and he knew from watching Bobby that it was possible to 'ice skate' anywhere and that was precisely what he didn't want. He was wearing what were basically glorified sunglasses and he rued the lack of fine control over his optic blasts more than he worried about what his white socks would look like after this was over.

_I'll get everyone connected now,_ Jean's voice said over their link.

_Get the Professor downstairs quickly. I don't want anyone isolated._ Scott walked slowly down the hallway toward the back of the house. He had intentionally sent Bobby away from the obvious point of entry, although he doubted that the back door was the only ingress site.

The doorway to the breakfast room and Scott paused, closing his eyes and willing the psionic link to stay quiet. He listened for movement, for breathing, for the fuzzy noise of a muffled radio, for any noise that would sound out of place from the usual gentle creaks of an old house settling. A minute with nothing and he ran past the doorway hunched over, stopping immediately on the other side to listen again.

_The lock on the sub-basement is out,_ Henry's voice came next. It was hard for a headblind person to hide emotion in their mindvoice and Scott could almost feel Henry's fear even as his words were strongly spoken. _I'm trying a manual override._

_We have no manual override,_ Scott pointed out after he had sprinted to the entry to the dining room. The sub-basement's door ran on an independent power source and wasn't even connected to the house's electrical grid. It should not have been affected by the blackout.

_We have brute force and a lady with some skill around a metal door,_ Henry replied, mental voice strained. _She's trying to wedge it loose and then I'll... push._

Lorna and Henry were halfway across the house, but he could hear their efforts in the silence. He was at the end of the hallway now, the kitchen across from him and the back door to his right from where he was pressed up against the wall.

_Scott, the elevator is out and whoever is here is psi-shielded,_ the Professor reported, his voice calm and quiet. He could feel the difference between the 'conference call' mindspeech and a private link and this was the latter. _Marvel Girl is going to bring us down the stairs._

_Whoever's here knows what they are doing,_ Scott said after he'd gotten into the kitchen and crouched down against the island. _Whoever's here knows about us._

The knife stand was on the counter underneath the cabinets to his left and he wanted to grab a pair. There were sheathed and boxed carving knives in the drawer with the cooking utensils, but he'd never be able to feel for them in the dark without either cutting his hand or making a racket. The Professor refused to have any conventional weapons on the property, insisting that a school was no place for such items and a mutant school even more so. Not even Weapon X could convince him to change his mind on that, although Scott and Logan had formed an unholy alliance to plead their case anyway.

Lorna's frustrated cry and Scott gritted his teeth. They were having no luck with the door and he didn't want them wasting their time or their confidence on it. Lorna was of no use as a player on this mission -- she was too scared and too drained of power -- and Henry was not the right one to support her. He'd only put them together to get them out of harm's way. The sub-basement was nearly impenetrable, which is why he'd chosen it as a retreating point. But if their attackers had disabled the door, then there was no guarantee the sub-levels were safe.

_Beast, Polaris! Leave the door alone. Meet Iceman at the pantry. Marvel Girl, bring the Professor down there, too._

What they called the pantry really wasn't; it was the old maid's quarters, but had been converted to a storage area since before he and Jean had been the Professor's only pupils. The interior entrance was in a recessed corner of the hallway and it had a hidden passage to the garage that was normally used to ease the load of bringing food stores into the house but could also be used to escape.

_They took out the juice for what looks like at least a mile,_ Ororo reported. _Nearest lights I can see are on the Thruway, I think. There are some trucks parked down the street. They look like UPS trucks, but it's too dark to see._

_Get closer if you can, but those aren't UPS trucks at this hour,_ Scott said, picking out the largest and smallest knives from the wooden stand. He'd need a free hand to lift his glasses, but without any sort of control over the blasts, he could only use the optic blasts for large-scale destruction and would need subtler methods. _How many are there?_

_Two together,_ Ororo answered. _There may be more, but I can't see because of the trees._

_Light one up._ He felt around for the fruit bowl on the counter, picking out the topmost apple.

_What?_

_Cyclops, are you sure that's wise?_ The Professor's voice, still smooth and unruffled. _We are supposed to be finding post-human solutions to violence, not slitting throats and electrocuting our opponents._

_We are defending our home, Professor,_ Scott replied. _We're going to catch the fallout from this no matter how it plays out -- we're screwed either way. I'd rather be screwed and free than screwed and living in another cage waiting for SHIELD to bail us out. Or worse._

Crouched down so that his outline wouldn't be visible from the kitchen windows -- surely their attackers had night-vision gear -- he moved to the open back door and knelt next to it. Whoever was watching the door wasn't doing it from directly outside. Taking a deep breath, he reared back on his knees and threw the apple, letting the momentum carry him forward until he was on all fours, head close to the ground and just outside the doorway.

There was no moonlight and he quickly lost track of the apple in the darkness, but he heard the muffled report of a rifle and the soft sound of the apple exploding. It had come from the left. He waited for more movement, but there was none.

_Cyke?_ Ororo was hesitant.

_Do it,_ he ordered. _We can't fight off what we can't see and we may hit their command post. Give me a second one by the back patio if you can._

Almost immediately, there was the rumble of distant thunder. He crawled backward, away from the door, and stood up. He scurried through the kitchen in a crouch and in to the hallway toward the Professor's psi-shielded study.

_Iceman, are you with Beast and Polaris yet?_

_Getting there._ Bobby sounded excited and Scott wasn't sure whether or not to be relieved or concerned. Bobby had been overeager on his first missions after he'd been activated and he hadn't quite gotten rid of that extra energy and desire to prove himself ready yet.

_I hear something in the hallway,_ Jean warned. _I don't think we have a path downstairs._

Scott cursed silently. _You and the Professor get outside from where you are. Get to the remote entry to the hangar and start the Blackbird's pre-flight routine._

_But--_

_I am going to meet everyone at the pantry,_ he cut Jean off. _We're going to take the path out through the garage and then outside and run like hell to catch up with you._

_Would we not stand a better chance of fighting on familiar ground?_ Xavier asked. _Presumably anyone who can successfully infiltrate the house knows of the Blackbird..._

_We're at the pantry, Cyke._ Bobby announced. _Should I open the passage?_

_No. Wait for me._

_They know about the Blackbird and they know about the sub-basement,_ Scott continued over the private link with Jean and Xavier. _But they're counting on us not getting to either. If we want to get out of here in one piece, we have to prove them wrong._

_I'll float us out off the balcony,_ Jean suggested when Xavier stayed silent.

_Wait for Ororo,_ Scott cautioned. _Stay where you are until she gets their attention._

The crack of lightning overhead, but the strike was too far away and on the other side of the house to hear any of the effects. _Go!_

He wondered why there wasn't more activity on this level the house. Were their attackers hoping to draw them outside or hoping to pen them in, knowing that they couldn't escape to the basement.

_I'm not seeing anyone moving down there,_ Ororo reported. _I didn't..._

_You didn't kill anyone,_ he cut her off sharply. _Come around back here and light up the backyard. I want to buy us some time by taking out the snipers with night-vision goggles._

_Snipers?_ Lorna's voice was tentative and almost too quiet to be heard.

_We only rate the best,_ Bobby replied with forced cheerfulness. _We're...AAAAAGH!_

Bobby was cut off and Scott heard the distant sound of ice shattering and Lorna's scream. Scott ran down the hallway toward the pantry. With a wheelchair in the house, the hallways had to remain uncluttered and Scott had no fear of running into or stepping on anything.

"Fuck!" Bobby yelled. "Owww. They're in the house! Cyke!"

"Coming!" He shifted his grip on the larger knife and dropped the second one as he ran. _Storm, do a sweep around. Take down anyone who's coming toward the house._

"Iceman, are you hurt?"

"He's been shot in the shoulder," Lorna called back, her voice breaking. "Some sort of dart thing."

Feet squeaking as he peeled around the corner toward the closet that hid the entrance to the sub-basement and found the trio. Bobby was sitting leaning against the wall and Lorna and Henry were crouched over him and, as Scott pulled up, he could feel the cold of a thick ice wall keeping them from their attackers.

"I'm okay," Bobby insisted with slurred words. "See? Ice wall."

"I see," Scott replied, although he could only barely. "Beast, can he be moved?"

"Too dark to see anything," Henry replied, almost as if he hadn't heard. In the dark, Scott couldn't see his face and, without the advantage of mindspeak, he couldn't tell how cool under fire Henry actually was or wasn't. Bobby was semi-conscious and Lorna was too scared to move and Scott needed another adult to rely on and he hated himself for wondering if Henry was that person. "Some sort of tranquilizer, obviously."

"Figures." They weren't here to kill them, but to take them prisoner again. "Okay, let's get out of here. Beast, you carry him. Polaris, I am going to need you to run point. You need to be the lookout, see if the coast is clear. Can you do that?"

He heard Lorna's breath hitch in a sniffle, but she nodded.

"We're going to get to the back door, then Storm is going to blind everyone wearing NODs, then we're gonna make a break for it," he told them in a calm voice. If he sounded worried, then they'd never make it. "Storm will watch over us from above and I'll bring up the rear and cover our tails. All you guys have to do is keep running. Okay?"

_Ororo? Did you hear?_

_Ready and waiting, Cyke,_ she replied.

Behind them, the ice wall made a hideous noise as it cracked, almost like nails on a chalkboard. There hadn't been any sounds of gunfire or bullets hitting the ice wall. Which meant that they were preparing to blow it up.

"Make a left at the corner, then go until you can't go anymore," he said quietly, waiting for Henry to shoulder the now-unconscious Bobby and indicate that he was ready. "On my mark: One... two... three... mark!"

Lorna took off and Scott watched until she disappeared, hoping that she didn't slip. He tapped Henry on the arm and he, too, started running.

_Jean?_ he asked over their link.

_We're out,_ she replied, her mental voice colored by strain. _I'm trying to get us to the copse of firs and hoping that nobody looks up... Shitfuck. We've been spotted._

Leaving her alone and undistracted, he turned to face the cracking ice wall. He could see diffuse bright spots of lights close to the other side of the wall. There was one about his eye-level, so it was probably attached to a headband or a helmet. There were sounds of ice chipping, which confirmed that the attackers on the other side were preparing explosives to take down the wall.

Stepping back away from the wall, he focused his eyes a couple of feet below the whitish glow and closed his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he took off his glasses and opened his eyes. The effect was immediate. The wall of ice was blown out, heavy chunks of ice flying and hitting people and oak paneling. He could see a dozen or so tiny white lights, the sort mounted on headbands, but the confirmation of his suspicions meant little under the circumstances.

_They've got a searchlight on me!_ Ororo fairly shouted. _I can't ditch it. They're firing at me._

It was a fight to keep his eyes trained on where he wanted to aim the optic blasts, trusting his peripheral vision to pick up on the details. It was against all his instincts to not look around, especially now that he could see without a haze of red. But the bright white lights destroyed his night vision and the shapes in his peripheral vision faded into darkness. It didn't matter though. His eyes were weapons now, not for vision, and he forced himself to concentrate.

_We've got one on us, too,_ Jean responded. _Maybe we should--_

_Jean, get the Professor to the plane **now**. Storm is fine on her own._

He focused lower down, body shots being preferred. At full power, aiming for the center of gravity would be the most effective. If he'd had his visor, he could have picked off weapons or dinged a helmet-mounted light. But without the visor or any way to curb the blasts, he worried that he'd take someone's hand or head off and that was not what he wanted, even if these people were here to kidnap him and his friends.

There was shouting and the men he hit were cursing in English and he filed that information away for later use, along with the fact that they were all in black uniforms, no insignia but obviously of military issue. He could tell by the sounds of impact that they were wearing body armor and that they were carrying M-4 assault rifles. There were more men than he'd thought that there would be. Whoever it was was taking no chances.

Once the return fire stopped, he closed his eyes, put his glasses back on, and turned to run. _Polaris, are you outside yet?_

A loud crack of lightning and a brilliant light coming from the end of the hallway answered his question. He could see Lorna and Henry, with his burden, backlit as they stood immobile by the door.

"What are you waiting for? Go!" He shouted as he ran. _Jean! Give Lorna directions._

There were the sounds of gunfire and shouting outside and while Henry stood like a statue, Lorna looked back at him with pure panic on her face.

"Go!" he yelled again, pointing with the knife in his hand. "I'm right behind you. Go!"

The gunfire stopped and just when Scott thought he'd have to push Lorna and Henry out the door himself, Lorna took off and Henry followed, getting swallowed by the darkness as soon as they were off the marble porch. Scott followed them, but tripped and fell heavily only a yard or two from the door.

_They've got a chopper!_ Ororo warned from her position on high. _It's coming in from the south._

_Blast it if it comes any closer,_ he barked, pulling himself up into a crouch down and getting to the edge of the porch as quickly as he could. His knees hurt sharply and his wrist was jammed. There was a heavy marble rail around the patio and he could huddle behind the stanchion. _Marvel Girl, keep an eye on Henry and Lorna._

_They're heading for the trees,_ Jean reported. _I didn't leave anyone standing there._

He could hear the helicopter overhead, but he could not see it because it had no lights on. A violation of FAA regulations as well as damned dangerous this close to several airports, whoever was flying it either didn't worry about getting caught or else they had permission already. If _that_ were the case...

"Don't move, Cyclops."

Scott heard the click of a rifle and froze. He had infallible aural landmarks and knew precisely where the woman who'd spoken was standing. She was too far back to be within range of the knife still in his hand, but if he pivoted on his left foot, then he could probably take out her knees with an optic blast before she fired.

"Stand up slowly," she ordered.

_Scott?_ Jean sounded very worried. _Lorna's been shot and Henry can't carry them both. Where are you?_

_I'm busy,_ he replied shortly. _Storm? Come down and help Beast. Marvel Girl, is the jet prepped yet?_

The soft sounds of well-trained soldiers moving into position around him. That complicated things. Getting everyone without getting shot in the process would be impossible.

"Move, Mister Summers!"

_A bit of help here, Storm? I need one more strike. Doesn't have to be close._

There was no response from Ororo and Scott didn't take the time to wonder if it was because she was distracted or because she had been subdued.

"All right, all right. Just tying my shoelace."

_Scott?_ Jean sounded scared and it irritated him.

"You're not wearing shoes. Get up slowly with your hands raised."

Still crouching, he centered himself over his feet so that he'd be able to move quickly without losing his balance. Taking a deep breath, he spun around on his left foot, whipping off his glasses. He heard a bullet whistle past his left ear, but the next sounds were the marble banister exploding outward, the shouts of men diving away from his blast and hitting the ground -- or getting hit by chunks of marble shrapnel. He heard glass breaking and knew he was facing the back of the house now. Turning back toward the patio and the yard, he heard another bullet scream by his ear.

Putting on his glasses, he ran down the stairs and along the row of shrubbery toward the woods. He heard shots ricochet off the remnants of the marble banister, but just ducked lower and kept running.

_SitRep!_

_I've lost them!_ Jean answered anxiously. _They're gone, totally gone!_

_Who?_ Scott asked as he ran among the trees. There were twigs and roots and he tripped constantly, the pebbles and fallen bits of wood digging into his bare feet so that they fairly hummed with pain. Feeling branches scrape against his cheek, he kept one hand on his glasses and the other extended in front of him. He could see just enough that it wasn't worth taking off his glasses and moving truly blindly.

_All of them!_ Jean sounded panicky. _Henry, 'Ro, Lorna, and Bobby. They're gone gone. I can't even feel them unconscious._

_They're not dead,_ he assured her harshly, annoyed more at his own stumbling than her fear. _If they'd wanted to kill us, they'd have done it right away instead of doping us first._

_We have the jet prepped, but..._

He froze to listen for following footsteps and to get rid of the pebble tearing into the ball of his right foot with each step. His foot was sticky with blood and had pine needles and twigs and dirt stuck to it. He was sure the other was no better. _Let me look around for a minute and see if I can't find them. If we let them get out of here, we may have no better luck finding them than we did Piotr._

_Do you think that these are the same ones who took Piotr?_ Jean sounded _timid_ and Scott was frustrated with her questions. It was one thing for Lorna to be terrified and for Henry to still be affected by Weapon X, but Jean had been through so much, he wished she'd be strong so that he didn't feel like he was carrying her, too.

_I don't know._ There were footsteps and they were drawing closer, so he started moving again. _Start the takeoff protocols. You may have to TK me to the plane. Can you reach me from here?_

_The closer the better,_ Jean answered and he could feel the hairs on his arms stand up on end. _In this case, closer would definitely be better._

Deciding that speed was probably more useful than care here, he took off at a run, again with one hand to his glasses and the other feeling for trees in the near-pitch darkness.

_Jesus! The hangar door is jammed shut!_ Jean cried. _Scott, I can't get you and the plane free._

Scott tripped on a root and barely kept his balance as he kept running. His feet hurt like hell, but right now it didn't matter. _Take care of the plane. I'm managing on my own._

_Fuck. It's like they parked a truck on top of the doors,_ he heard her mutter. The Blackbird was equipped for VTOL and the hangar doors were in the ground, hidden in a clearing among the Douglas Firs that covered more than half of the unlandscaped grounds. It couldn't be more than a couple of hundred yards away.

Bits of the underbrush were poking into the opened wounds in his feet with each step and he felt tears prick at his eyes, but he was too close now. He pushed on, stumbling and tripping with every step, until he ran into what felt like a wall.

Arms too powerful to be human wrapped around him and all he could do was kick fiercely and try to shake his head hard enough to knock his glasses off. It would be a full-strength blast, a headshot at close range, but at this moment he didn't _care_.

"Stop or you're going to break your foot," a muffled voice told him curtly.

"Fuck you," Scott spat out. He shook his head again, feeling the glasses slide down the bridge of his nose.

"Hurry up," the man-mountain called.

"This one's going straight in the ass for nearly kneecapping me," the woman from before growled. Scott swung his legs backward, despite knowing he wasn't close enough to make contact. But the motion did provide the angle of momentum he needed to finally get a earpiece of his glasses away from his ear. He closed his eyes and, with one more shake, he felt them slide loose on the left side.

He opened his eyes at the same time he felt the grip around him loosen, but it wasn't fast enough to save his captor. The helmet exploded and Scott dropped into a ball, grabbing the glasses as they finally fell from his face and putting them back on. He looked up and saw the man who had been holding him hunched over, hands to his face. He was not screaming in pain, was not saying anything at all, and Scott would have wondered why if there hadn't been a woman aiming a handgun at his head and the crunching sound of others surrounding him.

The woman turned suddenly as one of the giant fir trees started to creak and then fall. Taking the opportunity, Scott turned and ran.

_Jean!_ He tripped and fell, probably spraining his already sore wrist as he landed hard on the uneven ground. He heard footsteps behind him and felt a prick on his right arm and then heat and sharp pain. He struggled to his feet and started to run again, stumbling with every step. He felt his bicep and it was wet slick with blood, but apparently he'd been only grazed. Was that enough to get the drug into his system?

Without his arms out for balance, he fell again, knocking his glasses off as he landed on his knees. His eyes closed on instinct and he felt around for the glasses, fearful of missing them and just as fearful of crushing them should he hurry. His fingertips brushed against one lense as he felt the impact of a dart in his side. Reaching around, he tried to knock it loose as he stood, swiping at it as if it were a mosquito. He put his glasses back on and started to run again, aware of the burning feeling spreading from the wound in his side and in his arm and determined not to fall.

_Jean!_

He felt two more darts hit his right shoulder, then another lower down. It was like a night of drinking coming on full force to hit all at once. His motions were not quite under control, his head was spinning, and he was desperately thirsty. He felt numb, dimly aware of another dart hitting him. "I'm the knight who says 'Ni'."

In the distance, he could hear the roar of the Blackbird's VTOL system. Jean would come for him now.

He stumbled again and it felt like an eternity before he could get upright again, his knee straightening out to support his weight with agonizing slowness... until it finally gave way and he fell face first to the ground, his limbs abandoning all pretext of obedience and his arms refusing to push him up out of the dirt.

There were footsteps, quiet and quick behind and around him, keeping at a distance. He didn't need to look to know that there were weapons trained on him from all sides. But it was too dark to see anything and he was losing the fight to keep his eyes open at any rate.

"Bind his eyes, then his arms," the woman's voice said. "Stay clear of his legs. I don't think he can do anything, but I really don't want to have to chase him a third time."

He could do no more than twist his head away from the hands reaching down with a blindfold. Another set of gloved hands held his temples and the blindfold was put into place. It wasn't just a piece of cloth; it was hard and felt more like a pair of swimming goggles. Scott was sure it was made rudy quartz. He opened his eyes and nothing happened. He could see the ground right in front of him. What sort of blindfold... of course. They expected him to be unconscious. It must mean a short trip back to wherever they'd be kept.

_Jean?_

He felt his arms being yanked behind him, then tied back with what felt like plastic. He wanted to roll away, but he couldn't even manage a respectable wriggle.

"Manger, this is Mary. Tell God that Mary and Jesus have Cyclops and that the Wise Men are bringing him in."

_Gotcha._ A whisper in his mind and never more wanted.

He felt the electric hum of a telekinetic shield surround him and lift him gently.

"Get him _down_," the woman codenamed Mary barked. He saw gloved hands reaching for his legs, but bouncing off the invisible field. "Manger, we're losing Cyclops to a telekinetic shield. Take down that plane!"

_I'll bring you in as soon as I stabilize. One minute._ Jean sounded distracted. She had rarely flown the Blackbird and Scott wondered if she was using their link to see his memories to do so now. Now that he didn't have to move, he was surprised to find his mind still clear even as he was struggling to stay conscious.

The woman below had holstered the handgun and was now holding a flashlight that glowed like a beacon in the pitch blackness. She was aiming it at him and he had to squint, but he couldn't let his eyes close -- he had to try to see who their attackers were. But, as he moved higher and further away, she pointed it down and to the side and, in that moment, Scott swore his heart stopped for a beat because it ghosted over her companion for half of a second.

It didn't make sense, even if it did. There was no way such an assault worked without inside knowledge, no way he didn't take off his captor's head with a full-power headshot, no way anything could have worked out the way it did unless someone knew their habits as well as their powers... But there was no way Piotr Rasputin would betray them. Stockholm Syndrome was not a possibility. Piotr was too strong intellectually to be another Patty Hearst... He must have mis-seen. Maybe it was someone else with Piotr's mutation -- mutations weren't unique and it wasn't as if their DNA wasn't on file with half of the evil scientific geniuses of the world anyway. It made no sense. Even if nothing else made better sense than seeing a flashlight reflect off of organic steel skin.

_Hey, lover, you still there?_ Jean asked as the bubble gained speed. _How are you doing?_

_I hurt,_ he whispered back, letting unconsciousness take him.


	10. Outtake to Chapter 9

"You up for a walk?"

Piotr looked over at Clint, who was fiddling with his clip-on sunglasses with one hand and his knit cap with the other. It was a rhetorical question and Piotr took it as such, nodding acquiescence instead of affirmation.

They cleared security at the Triskelion's Manhattan tube entrance and headed northeast. Piotr had known something was up the moment Clint had guided them away from the Brooklyn tube, but he hadn't said anything and neither had Clint.

The afternoon sun was still high enough to create shadows and the wind was much stronger than he'd guessed from looking out the windows of Fury's office and watching the waves in the harbor. He pulled out his own gloves and tucked in the edge of his scarf.

They wound up on Broadway, walking briskly through the crowds. It was a Friday afternoon and the streets were full of government workers, low-level financiers and stock types, and the odd grouping of German tourists congregating on corners and taking pictures, their ruddy faces and Teutonic blond blandness making them stand out even more than the brightly colored winterwear against the black and muted darks that New Yorkers preferred.

They were headed for the Brooklyn Bridge, Piotr assumed. He had been in earshot when Clint had promised Laura that he'd bring Piotr and be home in time for dinner. It was too far to walk all the way home, but they could pick up the subway easily enough once in Brooklyn.

Once they hit City Hall and Park Row, Clint steered them into J&R Music World's camera store and went over to a display of digital cameras with powerful zoom lenses. As SHIELD's _plus ultra_ special ops team, they had a healthy discretionary budget for supplies, although most of their professional needs were ably met by SHIELD's internal engineers and designers. Clint, however, was always on the lookout for commercially available equipment and scoured websites to see what other nations' militaries and agencies used. Partially it was to see what the rest of the world was playing with, but mostly it was because SHIELD's tech department had a necessarily limited imagination and Clint liked proof when he insisted that there was no good reason that they couldn't build him something to his specifications.

They went through digital cameras at a depressingly high rate. Occasionally it was because a camera just wasn't doing the job, but mostly they broke them. Usually it was a complete destruction, either from being dropped or from being smashed by falls or bullets or other high-impact collisions. Sometimes they got water-damaged, once in a while they froze, and a few times they'd wrecked them with sand or other particulate matter. They tried different brands and makes and models; Piotr's big hands couldn't easily work the tiny cameras Natasha favored and Clint was always taking pictures through rifle scopes and otherwise from great distances. Natasha seemed to do the best with finding a happy compromise between durability and features, but Piotr had yet to find a camera he would re-order and Clint's search was bordering on the quixotic.

"We should have gone to B&H," Piotr said, trying not to sound like he was repeating the commercial for the store, which he was. J&R was good, very good, and had a lot of stuff, but B&H was a camera marketplace and had more of that instead of hundreds of square feet dedicated to DVDs and home computers.

"It's Friday in December," Clint replied, not looking up from the Olympus he was examining. "They're run by Orthodox Jews. The place'll be closing in half an hour, if it's not closed already. We can go on Sunday."

Left unsaid was that it was still up in the air whether they'd be in the country on Sunday and whether they'd be free. Or, really, whether Piotr would be free. In the week that had passed since they'd told Fury about Magneto, Piotr had hardly seen daylight, trapped all day in the gloomy, fluorescent rabbit warren that was Intel's corner of the Triskelion. It reminded him all too much of his initial arrival at the place, back when the twins had deposited him on the doorstep. Right down to the lingering suspicion and barely-disguised annoyance.

Clint spent fifteen minutes talking to the clerk about cameras, dismissing each suggested model in turn as one he'd already tried and rejected. He finally bought a Canon he'd been tinkering with, pulling out the credit card linked to the SHIELD account and not bothering with buying extra warranty coverage. The SHIELD beancounters griped, saying that they could at least recycle the cameras for lower-risk operatives, but the fact was that when the cameras broke, they were usually not in a position to be retrieved and returned for repairs.

The purchasing process was a bit byzantine, as per usual at J&R, and Clint waited until they were outside before pulling out his knife and prying open the plastic clamshell packaging. He saved the receipt, handed Piotr the bag of discarded plastic, and brought the camera to his eye, aiming it at City Hall without slowing down his stride or bumping into pedestrians.

"Picks up detail pretty quickly," Clint murmured approvingly. "And it's got a decent wide-angle."

"Does it have a 28mm setting?"

"Ayup," Clint affirmed, taking a picture one-handed and bringing the camera down from his face. He looked at the viewscreen and held it up for Piotr to see. The sun was making it impossible to get a good look, so he waved it off. He'd have a chance later to play with it.

Clint took back the bag and dumped it in the nearest garbage can as they crossed the street to follow the path that would lead them on to the bridge.

With the sun at their backs, the walk was pleasant and, because of the weather, not too crowded. The wind had died down and there was enough space around them that Piotr was sure that whatever Clint wanted to talk to him about would start there. It did.

"I'm not going to ask if you've got any more secrets," Clint started before they hit the first observation point. "Because you do and you should. If you've learned anything from me and 'Tasha in the last year, I hope it's been a little bit of skepticism and some self-preservation. The best way to survive is to always know the difference between what you want to see and what you are seeing."

Piotr could have said something about how he'd learned so much more from Clint and Natasha than simply the art of survival, but it would have been trite and Clint knew the truth of it. So he said nothing.

"All I'm going to ask is that you take stock of what you have left in that big cookie jar of secrets and pick out what you're keeping because you can and what you're keeping because you should." They hit the observation point and Clint took out the camera again, aiming it north toward the bridges there. The Manhattan Bridge and the Williamsburgh Bridge; Piotr wasn't sure which one was further south. "Fury's probably putting it in terms of what you're keeping that's dangerous and what isn't, but that's not it. It's all dangerous. What you keep will be dangerous to us, what you tell will be dangerous to them. And it's all on you."

Fury had indeed been exerting heavy pressure on Piotr to tell everything, to prove his loyalty, to repay their trust, to do the right thing. How much Fury actually expected to get out of that kind of salesmanship, Piotr didn't know, nor did he know how much Fury actually believed what he was saying when he did swing that cudgel of a sales pitch.

"I trust you, Pete," Clint said as they started to walk again. "I trust you with my life in the field, with my family out of it. I trust you with Natasha and no matter how well she can take care of herself, that's not something I give lightly, either. You have the same power over me and mine as you do over Xavier and his. I have faith that you'll do the right thing. Don't let me down."

"I'd never want to do that." Piotr looked away as he spoke, the moment too immediate and intense to bear eye contact. He knew that this was Clint's pitch, his angle. Reminding Piotr of what he'd given him, what he'd granted him without hesitation. Until now.

"I know," Clint replied. "It's why you're still on my team."

Left dangling was whether Piotr would still be on on Clint's team if he did not produce something else. Natasha was content to roll with the flow, to accept the new information and proceed on because that game was over and a new game was starting. Clint was not like that; he was a builder, a man who checked his foundations before moving on because he knew he'd return. Clint wanted to know where Piotr stood, how reliable he really was, how able he was to do what Clint wanted when Clint needed it to be done.

They spent the rest of the mile walk over the bridge in silence, Clint taking pictures and Piotr taking stock.

There was, in truth, very little of immediate value in what Piotr had left in his reserve of secrets and insights into the world of mutant power politics. He'd never mentioned Shinobi Shaw, but he'd have been very surprised if Fury had no knowledge of him considering that Shaw was in league with the twins. It would be like Wanda and Pietro to drop such a tidbit before Fury, either as bait or as warning, and the Hellfire Club was not to be ignored under any circumstances. The rest of what he knew about Xavier and his ties to Erik Lehnsherr had been handed over during the last week's interrogations, but that, too, was less novel than noteworthy and mostly for the twists and kinks it threw into the relationship between Xavier and the twins. What was left was mostly about the X-Men themselves, their details and his own evaluations of their belief in and adherence to Xavier's cause.

The only remaining secret there, really, was Alex. SHIELD did not know that Alex Summers was a mutant, that he'd been kidnapped by Xavier and the X-Men, or that he was alive and well and living in England.

It had boggled Piotr at first, this ignorance. How had the X-Men, a group of rank amateurs, pulled off a heist like that practically right under SHIELD's nose? How had they continued the ruse, especially after Weapon X when it became clear that SHIELD was at least tangentially keeping an eye on them? Alex took precautions, but how devious could even someone as paranoid as Alex be to avoid detection when he was living under his own name? SHIELD had known that Alex was Scott's brother and that he had been with the Friends of Humanity, but they'd closed his file after his 'death' more than three years ago.

But if a year with SHIELD had resolved some of that confusion, the last week had certainly resolved the rest. Xavier had gotten away with so much because Fury -- and by extension SHIELD -- had so completely underestimated him that they were simply unable to conceive of the sort of work he could do, the damage he could inflict. Despite the X-Men's high-profile successes and failtures, it wouldn't have crossed SHIELD's collective genius minds that Xavier and the X-Men were capable of creating and maintaining an invisible subculture. SHIELD was used to the average civilian mutant, cowed by fear and the threat of Sentinels into obedience of the law and adherence to social norms. Places like the club in Lille were not on their radar. It was why Fury would never truly have a handle on the twins and the Brotherhood, why Xavier could get away with so much -- including hiding alpha-level mutant Alex Summers in plain sight. And Piotr wasn't sure if he should be the one to point out those blind spots because that ignorance protected far more than Xavier or Wanda or Alex or Jean. He hadn't grown up among the crumbling rubble of the Soviet empire to not learn that trusting the government was generally a bad idea. The Sentinels were inactive now, but that could change on a whim or in response to any sort of threat, real or imagined. Fury -- and Clint and Natasha -- may have the fate of the world in their best interests, but they were not operating in a vacuum and they could not control what happened to the information they had once it got out. Clint wanted Piotr to prove his mettle and do the right thing, but that right thing may not be what Clint hoped it would be. And Piotr felt a little sick thinking of what the consequences of that might be.

It put a bit of a damper on the rest of the afternoon. They picked up the subway at Borough Hall and made it back to the Barton residence in time for a spirited game of backyard touch football with the kids before sunset, an unverbalized reminder of what Piotr had gained and what he could still lose. 


End file.
